BDD Formulation: Cleaning Up an Old Scenario
Seb Rose & Gáspár Nagy
BDD Books
This is a chapter from the book Formulation – Document examples with Given/When/Then.
What do good scenarios using the Given/When/Then-based format called Gherkin look like? Good scenarios can illustrate requirements, serve as documentation of detailed decisions,
and be used as automated tests that are easy to maintain. The Gherkin format is supported by many BDD tools, including the different flavours of Cucumber, Behat or SpecFlow, but
the ideas described in the book are also suitable for other BDD tools, like JBehave or Robot Framework.
The book is written for everyone involved in the specification and delivery of software: product owners, business analysts, developers, and testers.
This is the second in the BDD Books series that will guide you through the entire development process, including specific technical practices needed to successfully drive development
using collaboratively-authored specifications and living documentation.
If you enjoy this chapter, you may be interested in obtaining the full book which you will find available on Amazon and Leanpub.
This eBook includes the following sections:
• The old scenario
• Keep your scenarios BRIEF
• Using example maps to provide focus
• Document the essence of the behaviour
• Scenarios should read like a specification
• Use real data when it provides clarity
• Communication, not testing
• Illustrative scenarios
About Me!
Seb Rose
Software Consultant & Trainer, Independent, UK
Consultant, coach, trainer, analyst, and developer for over 40 years. Seb has been a consultant, coach, designer, analyst and developer for over 40 years. He has been involved in the full development lifecycle with experience that ranges from architecture to support, from C to Visual Basic. During his career, he has worked for companies large (e.g. IBM, Amazon) and small, and has extensive experience of failed projects. He’s now an independent software consultant and trainer, promoting effective ways of working to the software development and testing community. Regular speaker at conferences and occasional contributor to software journals. Co-author of the BDD Books series “Discovery” and “Formulation” (bddbooks.com), lead author of “The Cucumber for Java Book” (Pragmatic Programmers), and contributing author to “97 Things Every Programmer Should Know” (O’Reilly). He blogs at claysnow.co.uk and socialises as @[email protected]
Gáspár Nagy
Coach, Trainer and BDD addict, Creator of SpecFlow – Spec Solutions, Hungary
Gáspár Nagy is the creator of SpecFlow, regular conference speaker, blogger (http://gasparnagy.com), editor of the BDD Addict monthly newsletter (http://bddaddict.com), and co-author of the books “”Discovery: Explore behaviour using examples”” and “”Formulation: Document examples with Given/When/Then”” (http://bddbooks.com). Gáspár is an independent coach, trainer and test automation expert focusing on helping teams implementing BDD and SpecFlow. He has more than 20 years of experience in enterprise software development as he worked as an architect and agile developer coach.