Why I decided to become Professional Scrum Trainer (PST)

I have been teaching Certified Scrum Developer (CSD) course in India and other part of Asia for last 3-4 years and could have decided to take path of Certified Scrum Trainer (CST). It's also not true that I didn't think about it and didn't want to be one of the CST.
So my Professional Scrum Trainer story start with my hunt for agile coaching assignment during 2015 winter. I reached out a PST asking work for me especially for scrum and engineering coach. He tried but there was no available position in his company at that time for consultant. But he suggested to try PST because it will open many door for me. I took his advice seriously and started my journey by passing Professional Scrum Master - I with 95% as this was the first requirement. Went to Netherlands and London to attend my PSM-TTT and PSD-TTT.
But somehow I decided not to pursue PST after attending TTT because I didn't want to stop teaching CSD course. A course that gave me identify in my community and course that I love teaching all the time. Scrum Alliance came with EST (Endorsed Scrum Trainer) in September 2016 and I thought of trying but that didn't workout either. Here come December 2016 and I was asked once again what I am planning for? But by that time I was sure not to choose CST as option. I started hearing lot more quality issues of Scrum Alliance certifications especially CSM and CSP. I don't want to discuss something that everyone knows about.
I took few days off in December to decide about it. Since I am a teacher and coach so do I need any license to teach or coach? No. So why need license either CST or PST? It's not about me but about people to whom I teach. If about students then my not to give best to them. Here I am with best for my student after going through some tough processes to become PST like passing PSD-1, PSM -III with 95% and clearing peer review (I think it was one the biggest panel during Xmas holiday).
It wasn't for me but for the people I teach. This line has helped me a lot in deciding my path. Something good happened just after clearing PST. You know what? Scrum Alliance has updated REP agreement in December and now I can even teach my CSD as well.
Here I am with courses that my students like learning. Write to me if you wanted to become Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) or wanted to attend my workshop to learn something real and fruitful. I organize Professional Scrum Master (PSM) and Professional Scrum Developer (PSD) training in Chennai, Bangalore, Colombo, Jakarta, Singapore, Manila, Dubai and Kuala Lumpur.

How to start TDD (Test Driven Development)?

This is a most common question I here in my training as soon as I say TDD is based on test first approach and we should write test before writing code. If you are already writing unit test for your code after writing code then moving on TDD is easy for you but many developers don’t even write unit test. If they write then they write functional test instead of unit test.

How to differentiate between unit test and functional test?

Developers often write functional test as unit test and ask how is different between tests written by testers. Answer is testers write more negative test cases compare to developers as part of functional test. Basically developers write test NOT to check a unit of code but to check a slice of functionality. This is not unit test. Unit test is for one unit of code like one method, one code block, interface, class or function and functional test is for a piece of functionality after integrating all related code. 

How to switch from functional test to unit test?

Until developer understand what unit test is and how to write an independent unit test to check piece of code, moving to TDD will not be easy. Usually developer start coding either from UI then middle tier OR database then middle tier so if you ask them to write business layer or controller directly without UI or DB, they struggle. I do see few developers have started writing unit test using unit testing framework but for different purpose. Purpose is to meet some agreed condition related to code coverage but if you go and look at it closely then again those tests are not unit test but functional test. Developers need to explore or get trained on writing unit test and practice it under guidance of coach for some time to make it habit. This will only happen when you understand importance of unit test and can think what exactly your code is supposed to do. Nowadays developers has good unit testing framework like junit, testing, nunit and ftest as well as need for unit test. So only missing thing is how to write good unit test.

Shift from code first to test first

This is another big area where many developer say how someone can write/think or execute test until code is not there. Since we all know our expectation from our code, so it is only about writing those expectations and nothing more. Believe in this idea that if I don't know how to test piece of code I am writing then most likely those code is not needed. TDD is not a testing practice but a development practice. It helps you to design code piece by piece to meet end goal. 

How to start writing TDD?

Take any existing application and try adding new code in system but think about how you will test your code? Whatever you can think, add those as unit test one by one and then write minimum code that can satisfy your each test. I have seen many team members going through this route and adopting TDD and I am sure you can also do that.