Lean TDD

TDD Without the Waste

TDD is supposed to make you faster. So why does it feel like extra work?

Because a lot of TDD advice adds waste — heavy mocking, testing every internal function in isolation, rigid micro-steps that slow you down instead of helping you ship. Lean TDD strips that away. Using Lean principles of identifying value and eliminating waste, this book rebuilds TDD into what it should have been all along: a way to develop code faster, catch bugs earlier, and refactor without fear.

You'll learn the different interpretations of TDD that have emerged over the past 25 years, see which practices actually help and which just add ceremony, and walk away with a pragmatic approach that works whether you're coding by hand or with AI, solo or on a team.

This is a short book. It's meant to change how you work, not sit on a shelf.