Kent Beck

Kent Beck, born in 1961, is an American software engineer, author and consultant best known for creating test-driven development, founding extreme programming and co-creating the JUnit testing framework with Erich Gamma in 2000. He was one of the seventeen original signatories of the Agile Manifesto in 2001 and was a primary author of its emphasis on individuals and interactions over processes and tools. He studied computer and information science at the University of Oregon between 1979 and 1987. In 1996 he was hired to work on the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System, where he led his team to program in pairs and test often, an approach he named extreme programming and described in his 1999 book Extreme Programming Explained. His other books include Test Driven Development by Example and Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns. He worked at Facebook from 2011 to 2018 and later joined Gusto as a software fellow and coach.