The frequent disconnection between engineers and business professionals is the major problem while launching new digital projects. When this communication gap is not fixed on time, it can squander resources and time.
.jpg "Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)")
However, you can fix this issue with the right strategy and improve the communication gap, the primary reason for this disconnection. Behavior Driven Development (BDD) is an effective way to prevent most bottlenecks from projecting progress and max out the team effort.
As business professionals, if you understand your team's capabilities and software requirements, it becomes easy to create software with high business value.
What is Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)?
Behavior-driven development (BDD) is an advanced way to design and synthesize practices from the previous test-driven development (TDD) tool.
It's a tool that helps in clarifying the final scope and proper measures to get the desired software features with better estimation reducing the development team load.
Behavior-driven development is a powerful tool that improves code quality, reduces expenses for software maintenance, and minimizes project risk.
● It's a popular language used to define the behavior of an application.
● It’s a collaboration tool for product engineers, managers, and testers.
● It’s a system for automatically testing software behaviors.
BDD started its journey as a simple modification of a test-driven development tool. Still, its use case increased dramatically with time and is now a full-blown software development methodology.
Implementing BDD Approach
Behavior-driven development tools make collaboration and communication easier between departments by filling the gap. When all departments start collaborating, it becomes easy for them to manage and deliver software development projects effectively and quickly.
The approach of BDD ensures that the overall development project focuses on the actual business needs and, at the same time, meets all user requirements and demands.
The complete BDD approach is divided into two significant sections. They are-
● First Section: In this section, the different ways and behaviors of users interact with the product are illustrated using pre-written examples in ubiquitous language.
● Second Section: This section allows developers to check the functionality from the user end. Apart from checking the functionality, it also ensures that the overall system works precisely and per the business demand.
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How does BDD Work?
In BDD, the starting point for software design is the acceptance tests. BDD serves as the basis for communication between the Development Team and Stakeholders.
BDD creates code between users and developers through various interactions. This overall process is known as "outside-in" development. Next, examples are created which describe different behavior of the software, and then users evaluate them.
In simple terms, BDD makes sure that the complete development projects stay focused on the business need while, at the same time, fulfilling all user requirements alongside.
Below are the three ways how BDD does all that-
● By working in rapid iterations to enhance the flow of value and increase feedback. These iterations are small units.
● By encouraging collaboration across different roles within the project. This helps to build a shared understanding of the problem.
● By generating system documentation that gets checked by the behavior of the system.
BDD also uses collaborative work on concrete, real-world examples illustrating how different systems behave. These examples will later guide in implementation.
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Pros and Cons for BDD
● Pros
One of the biggest challenges software projects face is communication between stakeholders. Using a webinar platform to connect all stakeholders while building the software as per the requirements becomes crucial.
And here comes BDD into play as a powerful communication tool that helps to drive better cooperation between stakeholders and all other individuals involved, whether from the technical end or the nontechnical end.
BDD enables everyone on the project team to read and write acceptance tests; the developer's code automates tests so that the business stakeholders can easily understand them.
Here is the list of other benefits offered by BDD:
● Strong Collaboration: BDD collaborates among product owners, shared language, developers, and testers. This collaboration creates in-depth visibility of the project's progression.
● Shorter Learning Curve: BDD has a shorter learning curve, as explained using simple language.
● High Visibility: BDD can reach a wider audience because it's a non-technical process.
● Rapid Iterations: To meet user requirements quickly, BDD allows responding swiftly to all users' feedback and making desired improvements.
● BDD Test Suite: Adopting BDD gives your team confidence like TDD, but here you get this in the form of a test suite.
● Eliminate Waste: To reduce rework due to acceptance criteria and misinterpreted requirements, BDD allows you to communicate with requirements more precisely.
● Focus on User Needs: The most important thing in running a business is to offer the best product to your users because satisfied users are good for business. For this, the BDD methodology allows user needs to be met through software development
● Meet Business Objectives: BDD comes with the most advanced feature of tracing back to the actual business objectives to check if the ongoing production is fine.
● Cons
Like any other development module, BDD also has some drawbacks. But one thing is good with BDD; the overall disadvantages are less in count than the earlier TDD model.
Here are some common pitfalls of BDD:
● It's mandatory to be aware of all TDD concepts or have exposure to these before choosing for BDD.
● Behavior-driven development is not compatible with other significant approaches like the popular waterfall approach.
● It is mandatory to have sufficient technical expertise for all Testers before using BDD.
● BDD may not be that effective if the requirements aren’t meticulously specified and can even cause sudden failure.
● BDD can't be made purely technical because it's a primarily conceptual approach.
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BDD Best Practices
BDD becomes easy and seamless when you know how best practices are essential for successful automation testing. Below is the list of some selected and effective practices that you must know-
● It's crucial to maintain the correct sequence of Given-When-Then.
● There should be only one ‘When’ clause for each scenario that clearly describes the exact purpose of the test.
● Tense plays a crucial role, and this is why use present tense for 'When,' past tense for 'Given' clauses, and future tense for 'Then.'
● You have to use the 'And' clause to add multiple Then and Given.
● In 'Background,' you have to put the scenarios prerequisite steps in. However, you can use the Before hook also if you find these steps more technical.
● Rather than being UX/UI actions, Scenarios should preferably be more functionality-oriented.
● For Web Services, you can also write the BDD Styled Acceptance Criteria if understandable to the users.
● Smartness is in talking to business people before writing scenarios.
● Rather than using the Imperative steps, you should use the declarative steps.
How is BDD Different from TDD?
BDD means Behavior Driven Development, where you create an executable specification that fails due to the unavailability of the required feature; after that, it asks for the simplest code to pass the spec. You have to repeat this complete process until a release candidate is ready to ship.
TDD means Test Driven Development, where you write the test that fails due to the unavailability of the functionality. Then, you have to write the most straightforward code to pass the spec and remove duplication. You have to do refactoring. Like BDD, you have to repeat this complete Red-Green-Refactor repeatedly until you get the complete feature.
Below we have listed some key differences to compare how BDD is different from TDD-
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Parameters |
BDD |
TDD |
|
Theoretical Definition |
BDD focuses on the system's behavior and is a development
technique. |
TDD is also a development technique, but it focuses on
implementing a feature. |
|
Language Used |
Simple English (Gherkin) |
Written in a programming language similar to the one used for
feature development. Example: Python,
Java, etc. |
|
Participants |
Customers, Developers, QAs |
Developer |
|
Tool Used |
Gherkin, Concordian JBehave, Dave, Cucumber, Spec Flow, BeanSpec, |
JDave, BeanSpec, Spec Flow, Gherkin Concordian, Cucumber, JBehave,
FitNesse |
|
Main Objective |
Understanding Requirements |
Unit Tests |
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