Originally published January 2010 The other night I was having drinks in the Tower Bar of the Hotel Hafen in Hamburg (highly recommend for the view if not the service) with Henning Wolf and Arne Roock of it-agile when I casually mentioned that test-driven development was kanban for code. Arne teaches kanban but the connection wasn’t obvious to him, so I sketched my idea (see napkin above). He seemed to understand (he kept nodding, anyway), but I thought it prudent to follow up with a post to make sure I’d thought the whole thing through. Arne, this one’s for you.

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Test-driven development (TDD) can be considered as kanban for code, where the tests serve as kanban cards requesting changes in the behavior and options of the system. TDD improves feedback for developers and ensures that the changes made to the logic and structure of the system do not introduce collateral damage.

TDD is Kanban for Code