Empirical Assessment of Test-First Approach

The test-first approach, which is based on an iterative process of "setting up test cases, implementing the functionality, and having all test cases passed", has been put forward for decades however knowledge on test-first approach is limited. This research abstract states the limitations that previous studies in this area have, describes a controlled experiment with undergraduate students in the context of Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory (SSEO) environment to investigate the distinction between test-first and test-last approach (traditional approach), presents research questions and hypotheses set up before the experiment from the quality and productivity perspective, and expounds methods of data collection and validation