PHP Sussex: What is TDD and why should I care? How to explain TDD to a non-technical audience

After a short break in August, we’re back in September with a great talk by Naomi Gotts. Naomi is a Senior Software Engineer at Tillo and a regular speaker at conferences and local meetups (she gave a fantastic opening keynote at PHP UK earlier this year).

This time around Naomi will tell us about Test-Driven Development in a presentation that will help you explain this practice to non-technical people (and maybe also convince you to give it a go if you’re still on the fence 😉) (more details on the talk further down).

Please note that we’ll be trialling a new location – we’ll be headed to Runway East, a new space that is a short walk from Brighton Station and that we think may be a better home for PHP Sussex going forward.

This event will be hybrid, meaning you can either join in person or online (please register for the meetup either way!):

The in-person event will take place at Runway East in Brighton from 6 pm. There will be food and drinks and you’re welcome to come have a chat before the talk starts (around 6:30 pm).

Online participants can join the live stream from 6:30 pm.

This is how Naomi introduces her talk:

“To the non-technical world, TDD is just another acronym that developers drop into conversations every now and then. For those of us on the technical side of the fence, we know that being able to work test-first is a skill. A skill that takes practice and perseverance to hone and reap the benefits from. But why should our business stakeholders care about helping and supporting us on our TDD journeys?

As developers we are often faced with the challenge of having to explain technical subjects to non-technical colleagues. This talk will delve into the business case for TDD, explaining why it is important and using an interactive example to demonstrate how it helps improve development flow. It will leave attendees with a specific example and a more generic overall approach to presenting technical topics to non-technical audiences.”

Hope to see you there and then!

As always, a big thank you to Silicon Brighton for their support.