atdd and bdd the great beat down…or…debate

ATDD and BDD The Great “Beat Down” …

or “Debate”

Bob Galen [email protected]

Mary Thorn [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



Copyright © 2016 RGCG, LLC 2

IntroductionBob Galen Independent Agile Coach (CEC) at RGCG, LLC Principle Agile Evangelist at Velocity Partners

Somewhere ‘north’ of 30 years overall experience Wide variety of technical stacks and business domains Developer first, then Project Management / Leadership, then

Testing Senior/Executive software development leadership for 20+ years Practicing formal agility since 2000 XP, Lean, Scrum, and Kanban experience From Cary, North Carolina

Bias Disclaimer:Agile is THE BEST Methodology

for Software Development…However, NOT a Silver Bullet!

http://www.rgalen.com/


http://www.velocitypartners.net/

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IntroductionMary Thorn

Mary Thorn is the Director of Quality at Ipreo in Raleigh, NC

Mary has a broad testing background that spans automation, data warehouses, and web-based systems in a wide variety of technologies and testing techniques.

During her more than seventeen years of experience in healthcare, HR, agriculture, and SaaS-based products,

Mary has held manager and contributor level positions in software development organizations.

She has a strong interest in agile testing methodologies and direct experience leading and coaching agile teams through Scrum adoption & beyond.

Mary is also the Chief Storyteller in the book “The Three Pillars of Agile Quality & Testing”.

Copyright © 2016 RGCG, LLC

http://www.ipreo.com/


Bob: The Stories

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User StoryConstruct

As a <role>

I want <system behavior>

So that I realize <some business value>

**And can see that it does <example>

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User Stories 3 Parts of a story, 3-C’s

by Ron Jeffries Card Conversation Confirmation

Cards are intentionally vague or incomplete in order to foster conversation and an emergent solution

Confirmation (Acceptance Tests) are the specific things required to consider the story ‘done’ or acceptable to our customer

High 15

As traveler I want to get directions between

two points, so I can get to my destination

• Verify I can enter addresses in all 50 states• Verify directions can cross state boundaries• Verify that directions are with +/- 5% mileage of MapQuest• Verify that addresses can be swapped for return• Verify that invalid addresses are handled w/error message

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Product Owner Role: Card : Conversation : Confirmation

Front of card – describes the Story characteristics – flexible format 1-2 sentences; short and succinct I’ve seen limits of 5 words per Story Could be task-oriented, a milestone, simple work, virtually anything the

team needs to do Don’t get too hung up on ‘phrasing’

As a dog owner, I want to sign-upfor a kennel reservation over Christmas so that I get a confirmed spot

As the Google Map interface, setup a mechanism for frequent Travelers to save and share their maps, so that they save time

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Product Owner Role: Card : Conversation : Confirmation Product Owner must participate in defining ‘doneness’ criteria for card(s)

Completed with heavy tester input and buy-in from all team members Unlike Cards, confirmations are normally quite specific Confirmations document what must be demonstrated to complete the story Confirmations are synonymous with Acceptance Tests

Should try to automate them, perhaps using FitNesse or Cucumber?

Verify individual as a registered pet ownerVerify that preferred members get 15% discount on basic serviceVerify that preferred members get 25% discount on extended servicesand reservation priority over other membersVerify that past Christmas customers get reservation priorityVerify that declines get email with discount coupon for future services

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Product Owner Role: Card : Conversation : Confirmation Product Owner must be available for the emergent solution conversations

Critical point of influence in the design / construction phase

Conversations as a team are the most important component of the ‘3Cs’

Should also consider actual customers or other customer proxies in the process as appropriate

Should we present all the user

selections as radio button groups?

Lets story board that and see what it looks like!

Great idea! I can work on the acceptance test

criteria in parallel!

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Acceptance Tests

Story: Customer withdraws cash As a customer, I want to withdraw cash from an ATM, so that I don’t have to wait in line at the bank.

Do the acceptance test spur questions or conversations?Examples?

Acceptance Tests: Verify that customer authentication works Verify that the customer is limited to 3 transactions in an ATM

session Verify that sufficient balance is in place to support the transaction Verify that overall transaction workflow take no longer than 5

minutes Verify that the transaction is immediately viewable in the customers

online access

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Testing Does Not…

Come from the Acceptance Criteria, they are Business facing Value focused Priority focused

They help: The developers with design, coding, functional & non-functional

requirements The testers with test case development, risk-based testing

prioritization

They are NOT the primary or only tests!!!


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Stories come from…

Product Owner (individual) Story Writing workshop(s) with team

Backlog Refinement (Grooming)



3-Amigos

Coined by George Dinwiddie http://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2014/4/13/3-amigos-in-agile-teams

Swarming around the User Story by: Developer(s) Tester(s) Product Owner

Conversation device – reminder for collaboration amongst relevant team members

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http://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2014/4/13/3-amigos-in-agile-teams

http://rgalen.com/agile-training-news/2014/4/13/3-amigos-in-agile-teams

3-Amigos

Often takes the form of a: Feature team Story owner team

Surrounding the life-cycle of a story from: Story inception Epic writing Via Backlog Refinement:

Iterative - Feature/Theme decomposition (estimation-driven) Iterative - Story emergence – Ready?



Remember -- The Triad

Collaboration

Customer

Developer Tester

Ken Pugh has written a book on ATDD and uses the “Triad” to amplify this

collaborative pairing between roles…Product Owner is

central to that!Collaboration

FIRST…Automation

SECOND…

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The KEY to ATDD is…

It drives: Conversation, Collaboration, and Communication

Around the story, around what to test, and around the working code. Automation or executable acceptance tests are a second

level concern!!!

Now, Mary it’s your turn…


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Mary: The Automation


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In a nutshell, automated acceptance tests are executable

examples that define the system's specifications.


What are Automated Acceptance Tests?

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Acceptance Tests are: Formal examples that define requirements.

Executable.

Self-explanatory and readable by all team members.

Tests of business rules.

A living specification of system behavior.


What are Automated Acceptance Tests?

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What are Automated Acceptance Tests?Acceptance Tests do NOT Test pieces of code in isolation. They are not a substitute for unit

and integration tests.

Verify the entire system.

Verify all permutations of a piece of functionality.

Use mock objects except to remove a dependency on an external 3rd party.


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What are Automated Acceptance Tests?Benefits: Higher quality b/c everyone shares the same understanding of the

requirements and builds it right the first time.

Tests become the system's regression suite.

Create an objective verification of “done-ness” for a story. A story is done when all tests pass.

Create transparency into progress on a story.

Manual testers are part of the automation process.

Allows for more exploratory testing b/c happy path is automated


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Simple Example

Acceptance Criteria: Transactions are rounded to the nearest cent.

Original Value Rounded Value$0.021

$0.025

$0.029

$0.02

$0.02

$0.02


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Simple Example

Why was there confusion?

The goal was missing...

Goal: Create a currency conversion system.

The Concrete Example clarified what was meant by the acceptance criteria.

Refined Acceptance Criteria: Transactions are always rounded down to the nearest cent.


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Simple Example

This simple example is a REAL EXAMPLE in a system that was well-tested and approved by all parties.

Attacker was able to steal > $15,000 starting with a single cent using this process...

$0.01 → 0.0051 € rounded to 0.01 € 0.01 € → $0.0196 rounded to $0.02

A seemingly minor ambiguity in the requirements was very expensive.


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Take Away’s

Concrete examples drive understanding and consensus.

To create good representative examples, everyone must understand the goal of the story.

For technical people to properly understand the goal, they must understand the business domain.


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What does Cucumber have to do with this?

Everything!!!


Ahhh…The Automation

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Cucumber

• Cucumber lets software development teams describe how software should behave in plain text. The text is written in a business-readable domain-specific language and serves as documentation of requirements, automated regression tests and development-aid - all rolled into one format.

• Cucumber works with Ruby, Java, .NET, Flex or web applications written in any language. It has been translated to over 40 spoken languages.


http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/BusinessReadableDSL.html

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Components:

• Cucumber (Framework)• HTMLUnit (Browser Emulator)• Selinium/Watir (Browser Emulator API)• Features (Tests written in sentence format)• Step Definitions (Backend code to support Features)

Automated Testing - Cucumber Framework


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Automated Testing -Linking it all together

Command line – Rake TAGS - @abc

Cucumber Framework - Tags

Feature File - Sentence

Step Definition File – Matching Sentence

Terminal Result Output-

Browser Emulator Selinium/Watir – Execute Command


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Cucumber Feature Files

Keywords:• Tests have reserved words that begin each line:

Given, When, Then, And, But.• Use Given to state a precondition• Use When & And when taking an action• Use Then when asserting a validation

Scenario Outline: Verify Transactions are rounded to the nearest cent.

Given I am on the order screenWhen I make a transaction of 9.025And save the transactionThen the value should equal 9.02


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Cucumber Example@CucumberpresentationFeature: User would like to have a successful presentation Tests the following acceptance criteria: 1. Verify the attendees are awake 2. Verify the attendees are happy with the presentation

@AttendeeawakeScenario: Verify the attendees are awake

Given that I am an attendeeWhen I have drunk caffeineThen I will be able to listen to the presenter

@AttendeeishappyScenario: Verify Attendees are happy

Given I am the presenterWhen I talk slowAnd my content is interestingThen the attendees will be happy


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It drives: Executable Specifications, which drive conversation, but ALSO

code coverage, definitive examples, and Pass/Fail automation. Automation is the FIRST level concern!!!

Now, onto the Debate…


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Mary, what about the Story in the User Story? Bob, what about the promise of Product Owners writing

executable requirements? Bob, or the value of executable requirements? Mary, have you seen BDD miss the conversations?


Wrap-up

Final questions or discussion from attendees…

What do YOU think???

Thank you!

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Contact Info

Bob GalenPrincipal Consultant,

RGalen Consulting Group, L.L.C.

Experience-driven agile focused training, coaching & consulting

Cell: (919) [email protected] www.rgalen.com

[email protected] www.velocitypartners.net

BlogsProject Times - http://www.projecttimes.com/robert-galen/BA Times - http://www.batimes.com/robert-galen/

Podcast on all things ‘agile’ - http://www.meta-cast.com/

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http://www.velocitypartners.net/

http://www.projecttimes.com/robert-galen/

http://www.batimes.com/robert-galen/

http://www.meta-cast.com/