This is a concept that was introduced to me by WilfLalonde, Professor at CarletonUniversity in Ottawa.
The concepts are very similar to most of the concepts of XP. Although I would say that the Needs Driven Programming is a subset of the ideas of XP.
Wilf came up with this theory a few years ago. There was a special browser developed in Smalltalk that let you program in a needs driven fashion. Although no special browsers are required to program his way, but it was nice to use.
Some of the key points in a Needs Driven Programming environment are:
I found a lot of these ideas are also shared in XP.
-- SuhaylMasud
It seems that the work that you do with an IDE is a bit different when you write your tests first. Your mention of a special browser reminded me that I've been thinking about a TestDrivenBrowser. -- MichaelFeathers