An Excellent Article on Unit Testing

Alberto Savoia has written an excellent article on the benefits of unit testing.  The article is entitled  The Developer Testing Paradox.  In it he delves into the interesting idea that there is a threshold at which a program undergoes a "bugterial infection" in which bugs begin to multiply and compound on each other.  I would very much like to look into any non-linear trends in bug rates.  This will require consistent data from a few projects that undergo regular testing and bug reporting.

He also postulates seven laws of unit testing:

1. The Law of Management Commitment
2. The Law of Team Buy-In
3. The Law Of Metrics
4. The Law Of Targets
5. The Law Of Training And Coaching
6. The Law of Automation
7. The Law Of Failure

The Law of Failure will be near and dear to any tester's heart: Good Tests Fail.