Kent Beck

Kent Beck (born 1961) is an American software engineer, author, and consultant best known for creating test-driven development (TDD), founding extreme programming (XP), and co-creating the JUnit testing framework. He was one of the seventeen original signatories of the Agile Manifesto,

In 1996 Beck was hired to work on the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System, the corporation's payroll system. At the time, Chrysler was using the waterfall method of software programming and the development process was running behind deadlines. Beck directed his team to adopt a different approach: they divided the project into smaller tasks, programed in pairs, and frequently tested and updated their code. Beck called the approach extreme programming (XP), developing 12 principles and publishing a book called Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change in 1999. Beck published Test Driven Development: By Example in 2003.

In February 2001, Beck was among seventeen software practitioners who gathered in Snowbird, Utah, and signed the Agile Manifesto — a statement of values and principles intended to make software development more efficient and provide an alternative to heavyweight planning-driven development methodologies. In 2019, Beck joined Gusto as a software fellow and coach, where he coached engineering teams as they build out payroll systems for small businesses.

Publications Books 1996. Kent Beck's Guide to Better Smalltalk: A Sorted Collection. Cambridge University Press. 1997. Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns. Prentice Hall. 1999. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code. Addison-Wesley. With Martin Fowler, John Brant, William Opdyke, Don Roberts. 1999. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change. Addison-Wesley. Winner of the Jolt Productivity Award. 2000. Planning Extreme Programming. With Martin Fowler. Addison-Wesley. 2002. Test-Driven Development by Example. Addison-Wesley. Winner of the Jolt Productivity Award.

2003. Contributing to Eclipse: Principles, Patterns, and Plugins. With Erich Gamma. Addison-Wesley. 2004. JUnit Pocket Guide. O'Reilly. 2004. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, 2nd Edition. With Cynthia Andres. Addison-Wesley. Completely rewritten. 2007. Implementation Patterns. Addison-Wesley. 2023. Tidy First?: A Personal Exercise in Empirical Software Design. O'Reilly. Selected papers 1987. "Using Pattern Languages for Object-Oriented Programs". With Ward Cunningham. OOPSLA'87. 1989. "A Laboratory For Teaching Object-Oriented Thinking". With Ward Cunningham. OOPSLA'89. 1989. "Simple Smalltalk Testing: With Patterns". SUnit framework, origin of xUnit frameworks.