This is a brief history of Test Driven Development.

Kent Beck claimed to have rediscovered the concept of Test Driven Development.

1968 Alan J. Perlis at the NATO Software Engineering Conferences

Alan J. Perlis describes already in 1968 a software development process that has a lot of similarities with TDD.

“1. A software system can best be designed if the testing is interlaced with the designing instead of being used after the design. 2. A simulation which matches the requirements contains the control which organizes the design of the system. 3. Through successive repetitions of this process of interlaced testing and design the model ultimately becomes the software system itself. I think that it is the key of the approach that has been suggested, that there is no such question as testing things after the fact with simulation models, but that in effect the testing and the replacement of simulations with modules that are deeper and more detailed goes on with the simulation model controlling, as it were, the place and order in which these things are done.”

Alan J. Perlis - The NATO Software Engineering Conferences (1968)

1989 SUnit

The first unit test framework SUnit is initally described by Beck in “Simple Smalltalk Testing: With Patterns” as chapter 30 “Simple Smalltalk Testing”, in the book “Kent Beck’s Guide to Better Smalltalk”.

After the implementation of SUnit Beck used it to try out the concept of Tests-First-Development with eventually leads to TDD.

1996 Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System

Kent Beck and Ron Jeffries (among others) get started at the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System (C3) software. There they adopted the Extreme programming (XP) methodology including Test Driven Development.

1999 Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change

Kent Beck publishes his book on Extreme Programming.

2002 Test-Driven Development by Example

The book describes very clearly the TDD approach. It’s also published by Kent Beck.