Getting a team to write tests is change management 101:
People are resistant to change when they don't know how it benefits them directly and immediately.
My suggestions have been:
- By giving developers slight nudges every time they get frustrated with developing when tests aren't present is a good way to help them see the benefit. "Imagine how much easier it would be to write this piece of code if you had tests in places where this function calls other things".
- Enforcing it during commits (as you suggest, using PRs)
- Reminding your whole organization that while you migrate to implementing more testing that velocity of development will be impacted. This is really important, because it means people outside of the dev team also need to see the benefit.
- Eliminating "deadline cultures" first and then implementing unit testing
People are resistant to change when they don't know how it benefits them directly and immediately.
My suggestions have been:
- By giving developers slight nudges every time they get frustrated with developing when tests aren't present is a good way to help them see the benefit. "Imagine how much easier it would be to write this piece of code if you had tests in places where this function calls other things".
- Enforcing it during commits (as you suggest, using PRs)
- Reminding your whole organization that while you migrate to implementing more testing that velocity of development will be impacted. This is really important, because it means people outside of the dev team also need to see the benefit.
- Eliminating "deadline cultures" first and then implementing unit testing