My Personal Experience with TDD

Introduction to a booklet

Most developers know they should write tests. Fewer enjoy it. In this booklet, I share my honest journey with Test-Driven Development, from dreading unit tests to making TDD one of my most valuable development tools. Rather than rehashing TDD theory, this booklet tackles the practical challenges that caused me to almost give up on TDD before getting past the learning curve. Through a realistic case study, building a delivery assignment service for a logistics system, I walk through six common challenges I encountered while adopting TDD and the techniques I used to overcome them:

• Where do I even begin? Starting TDD in a real codebase, not a calculator example.
• Generating meaningful test cases for complex business logic.
• Testing orchestrating methods that coordinate multiple services.
• Maintaining tests during refactoring without constant breakage.
• Breaking down complex business logic into testable, incremental pieces.
• Long-term test maintenance as code and requirements evolve.

The examples use C# and .NET, but the principles apply to any language or paradigm. Whether you’re TDD-curious, have tried it and struggled, or are looking for ways to make your existing practice more sustainable, I hope this booklet offers practical, experience-based guidance. No dogma, just what actually works.

You can download the booklet here: My Personal Experience with TDD – its challenges and how to overcome them