Ship It! - 5.14 There's No Automated Testing

The biggest complaint that people have about automated tests is that maintaining them is too much trouble. Before you start writing and committing tests, be sure that you have a CI system in place. Set it up to run the tests every time the code changes. If you have test code that you’ve been running manually, port it to the CI system. Write your tests using mock client testing to get the maximum return for each test. It’s too late for you to write a unit test for every method in your code. Mock client tests are more efficient because a single test exercises a lot of code. Identify the tests to write using defect-driven testing This will let you add tests where they can do the most good. Only add a test if there is an active bug there right now. This means that any test you add will address the most current issues in your code, and you’ll get the maximum possible benefit out of every test.

Tip 39: Test where the bugs are

Getting people to use sound engineering practices even for silly old test code is important.  Brittle tests are more likely to get turned off -- which helps nobody.