Priorities

Writing unit tests is necessary part of writing good software, but doing it can really suck, because of how I've been doing it. I've been writing huge swaths of code, and then writing the test for each during in a single Testing phase of the project.

Working on my current project, I've spent too much time in that phase, because it's so boring and I hate doing it. When I finish the project's code, I want to be able to deploy it pretty quickly.

What I need to do, is write a small section of code, and write the tests necessary to test any new execution paths generated from that change.

According to Atlassian, the Software Development Lifecycle's testing phase is for identify[ing] and fix[ing] bugs, ensuring the software operates as intended before being deployed to users. I like this phase, but I think I'll turn it into a quick review of the current tests, to make sure I've not miswritten tests, or left important execution paths uncovered.

Granted, I started shifting way too closely to Waterfall and away from Kanban with this project. I wouldn't have this many tests to write if my Kanban tasks were smaller. I still think I should roll the bulk of the test-writing into the current In-progress stage of my Kanban board, though. While writing tests after the In-progress stage is fine sometimes, even a small Kanban task isn't necessarily limited to a single function. I want to be able to able to write a test after writing a single function, if need be.