I found an interesting information about Unit testing on MethodsandTools.com
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Unit Testing: Still Widely Informal
This poll examined how organizations perform unit testing. Is it an informal activity that is done before integration if there is some time left after programming or is it the key element of the development effort? The question was: How is unit testing performed at your location?
| Proportion | 2008 | 2006 |
| Unit testing is not performed | 17% | 13% |
| Unit testing is informal | 40% | 46% |
| Unit tests cases are documented | 9% | 11% |
| Unit tests cases and their executions are documented | 14% | 16% |
| We use a Test Driven Development approach | 20% | 14% |
Participants: 384 (2006:460) / Ending date: October 2008 (February 2006)
The complete text and the guess why these results are as they are you find here.
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It feels to me like the biggest problem is still that requirements and specs are communicated in such a way that tests are not part of the communication.
Add to that the idea that design is still a top down effort (and not an emergent property of the team’s effort) and it follows that unit testing is not growing at the rate it should.
It makes me think sometimes that maybe XP had the right idea; start with the engineering first, and then the project structure and practises. OR maybe I am just putting too much stock by James Shore’s opinion.