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Why is unit testing so important to flexibility?

I still read that without unit testing, you cannot be agile. While I understand the purpose of unit tests, why are they so important in flexibility? Is it because frequent builds can easily slow things down? And what about integration testing in agile, in the same case? Thanks to

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"... without unit testing, you can't be agile." Strictly speaking, this is a false statement. Agile does not prescribe a specific testing methodology. Anyone who tells you otherwise does not understand agility. Agile is about delivering high quality code and being responsive to change. If you can do this without writing unit tests, you can still be flexible.

Thus, unit tests are an important part of software development regardless of methodology. With them, it is difficult to write high quality software on a large scale without them. They help you determine that individual units of your code behave as they are designed. Whether you use unit tests and how many unit tests you write is a factor of how important it is for your code to be correct, how difficult it is to fix flaws if they produce it, etc.



I would argue that for most projects, having a robust, well-maintained suite of unit and integration tests helps your team be more agile. Having a good set of unit tests is very liberating as a developer - you can make changes quickly because you have a safety net. This makes it easier to quickly create stories and validate them.

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