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Behavior Driven Development

Behavior driven development (BDD) focuses on higher quality software by better collaboration across the team.

Telephone Game

Fundamentally, BDD is concerned about building the right product.

Outcomes

  • Develop a customer-first view of development
  • Greater visibility and transparency across the team
  • Create a ubiquitous language across business and technology
  • Minimize rework and increase flow
  • Reduce cost by capturing misunderstandings early

Phases of BDD

  1. Discovery. Generate examples through conversation that describes the behavior of the system from the customer's point of view. Techniques like Example Mapping provide the space to have collaborative conversations.

  2. Formulation. Establish a common language across the team to describe steps using Gherkin. Formulate user flows using the Given When Then structure to define scenarios and features.

  3. Automation. Convert Gherkin steps into automated acceptance test with test automation tools and frameworks.

Dan North has been the primary thought leader behind BDD, popularized from his blog