Tester-driven development

Tester driven development is an Anti-pattern in software development. It should not be confused with Test Driven Development. It refers to any software development project where the Software testing phase is too long. The testing phase is so long that the requirements may change radically during software testing. New or changed requirements often appear as bug reports. Bug tracking software usually lacks support for handling requirements. As a result of this nobody really knows what the system requirements are.

Projects that are developed using this anti-pattern often suffer from being extremely late. Another common problem is poor code quality.

Common causes for projects ending up being run this way are often:

• The testing phase started too early;
• Incomplete requirements;
• Inexperienced testers;
• Inexperienced developers;
• Poor project management.