Harvard Business Review motivates TDD

In the article What Really Motivates Workers, the January-February 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review reports on a multi-year study of top performance motivators. Between these five contenders:

• Instrumental support
• Progress
• Interpersonal support
• Collaboration
• Important work

progress was the top motivator by a large margin.

(Unfortunately, when the researchers surveyed 600 managers they found that most of them believed that “recognition for good work” was the top motivational factor.)

I think the study explains why test-driven development (TDD) is self-sustaining once mastered. Large software projects done in traditional fashion may go for months without finishing or delivering anything. That’s a hard situation in which to see progress, and hence un-motivating. The same project done with TDD results in a smaller system becoming functional more quickly, daily progress as you integrate your working code and tests with others, and even hourly progress in the form of the “green bar” of passing tests. Progress is more visible and more reliably and regularly experienced.

The author also found that the most de-motivating days were those where people experienced the opposite of progress: a setback. Anyone who’s worked on a body of un-tested legacy code knows how common it is to make a change and break something. Setbacks are a de-motivating experience made more common by the lack of any test control.

Developers are motivated by the progress TDD brings and shows them.