XP with Acceptance-Test Driven Development: A Rewrite Project for a Resource Optimization System

In his recent book ”Test-Driven Development” [1], Kent Beck describes briefly the concept of ”Acceptance-Test Driven Development”, and is broadly sceptical to whether it will work. After a successful project that used this technique, we wish to argue in favour of it and the TextTest [7] tool that we have built up around it. We have found that a working XP process can be built based around using only automated acceptance tests, and not doing any unit testing. In this paper we explain and analyse our XP process, its strengths and limitations, and by doing so we hope to inspire others to try and make it work for their projects too.