I have a long experience in enterprise software and I agree with the premise.
There are two kinds of test units: workflow and functional.
1 - Workflow test units are a waste of time because no single test unit stays valid when there is a change. In other words, whenever we added/removed steps in the workflow, 99% of the time we have to change the test unit to fit that new workflow which breaks the concept of "write once, test all the time" concept. In my experience, having proactive developers who test areas around the workflow that they changed is much faster and reliable.
2 - Functional test units are great. They test one function that needs certain parameters and is expected to spit a certain output i.e function to calculate dollar amounts or do any king of mathematical operations.
However, these functions tends to stay unchanged during the lifetime of a project. Therefore, the test units are rarely run.
From my experience workflow changes/bugs represent 80% of the problems we face in enterprise software. Functional changes/bug are rare and can be detected quickly.
This is why I agree with the author premise that unit testing is overhyped.
There are two kinds of test units: workflow and functional.
1 - Workflow test units are a waste of time because no single test unit stays valid when there is a change. In other words, whenever we added/removed steps in the workflow, 99% of the time we have to change the test unit to fit that new workflow which breaks the concept of "write once, test all the time" concept. In my experience, having proactive developers who test areas around the workflow that they changed is much faster and reliable.
2 - Functional test units are great. They test one function that needs certain parameters and is expected to spit a certain output i.e function to calculate dollar amounts or do any king of mathematical operations. However, these functions tends to stay unchanged during the lifetime of a project. Therefore, the test units are rarely run.
From my experience workflow changes/bugs represent 80% of the problems we face in enterprise software. Functional changes/bug are rare and can be detected quickly.
This is why I agree with the author premise that unit testing is overhyped.