Over time, even well-intentioned codebases tend to rot. Tests become brittle, refactoring feels risky, and architectural decisions made “for now” quietly lock teams into long-term pain. Many experienced developers know the theory—TDD, SOLID, clean architecture—yet still struggle to apply it effectively at scale.

In this full-day workshop, you’ll learn a pragmatic, experience-driven approach to designing and evolving maintainable, testable systems. Based on more than 30 years of professional development experience and 15 years of hands-on TDD practice, this workshop focuses on what actually works—and just as importantly, what doesn’t.

Core Topics

• The Foundations of Quality: The true value of Clean Code and how to apply DRY effectively without over-engineering.
• Architectural Strategy: How different architectural styles influence coupling, cohesion, and testability.
• Effective Automation: Navigating the different types of automated tests and writing unit tests that actually add value.
• Modern TDD: A realistic, non-dogmatic approach to Test-Driven Development and how to get started.
• Pragmatic Design: Why common interpretations of SOLID often backfire in real systems.
• Legacy Systems: Practical techniques for safely untangling a completed legacy codebase.
• Testable Construction: Designing code that is testable by construction, not by accident.

The workshop is highly practical, combining short lectures with hands-on exercises and live coding. While all examples are in C#, the principles and techniques apply equally to any object-oriented language or platform.