Unit Testing

Customer visits are one of the more fun parts of my job.  Last week, Scott Wiltamuth and I visited three large enterprise customers to understand how they are using (or not using) our tools and technologies, what works well for them, what doesn’t work well for them, what some of their major pain points are, etc. Scott runs the C# team and is a Developer Division veteran.  Each customer had their own set of constructive feedback, but a common theme emerged – all of them were interested in knowing more about Visual Studio 2005 Team System and how that can help them with team development.  These three customers were particularly interested in how Visual Studio 2005 Team System handles Unit Testing.

The Visual Studio 2005 Team Test Edition equips customers with tools to manage a wide array of unit tests, manual tests and web tests. Unit Tests work on functions and methods and Visual Studio 2005 Team System makes it easy to manage and run unit tests. The customers reiterated basic problems most people face with unit testing – test creation, test organization, result reporting etc. Visual Studio 2005 Team System has implemented features to address all these problems. For example, to create unit tests, simply right-click in your code and select Create Tests. The Test Manager allows you to select which tests you need to run. You can group tests to test data access, business logic or other functionality in your code. Test results are easily published to the Team Foundation Server enabling you to share results via a portal site. Visual Studio 2005 Team System treats testing as a top-tier activity helping reduce the risks inherent with delivering complex applications. For more information, see Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Enabling Better Software through Better Testing.

Namaste!