Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) is a collaborative and disciplined technique to help us build the right product. In the last decade BDD has had her own bit of glory and criticism. Many teams in the recent past have reaped benefits from this technical practice, while some teams complain that are yet to find any value. This article focuses on answering two questions; Why BDD might not always be the right choice? What are the ideal conditions when teams should adopt it? In this talk we come up with a BDD adoption matrix to help us answer the above questions. We also assert that for successful product development it is crucial to bridge the gap between the problem space and solution space, each of which has its own set of complexities. We conclude that Behavior Driven Development can be one of the effective techniques to bridge this gap especially if the problem space is complex. In case the problem space is simple it might be an over kill and teams might not find real value practicing BDD. We also observe that teams whose problem space is simple can continue to document scenarios and automate acceptance testing but they need not spend elaborate time and effort towards discussing and debating scenarios.

1. Copyright © 2015 SolutionsIQ Inc. All rights reserved.
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When to Embrace Behavior Driven
development ?
How to adopt it the right way?
PREPARED BY
Ranjith Tharayil
Agile Coach
SolutionsIQ

2. What the hell is this?
2

3. BDD is a second-generation, outside-in, pull-based,
multiple-stakeholder, multiple-scale, high-automation,
agile methodology. It describes a cycle of interactions with
well-defined outputs, resulting in the delivery of working,
tested software that matters.
“
”
3
Dan North

4. Not again , Stop the crap we have seen this
4

5. The BDD Philosophy : how can we collaborate better ?
5
Product Owner
Developers Quality Assurance
Production Support
Business

6. The BDD school of thought ,Outside in
6
Spec
Test
Code
Outside in

7. The flow
7
N-1 N N+1
» Sprints
Spec
By
example
» Sprint planning
» Pull only those with spec ready» Three Amigo
Meetings
» BA ,PO
» Developers
» QA
» Production Support
» Any one who could
contribute in scenario
identification
• Disciplined delivery
• Working agreements
• DOR
• DOD
• Less risk of failure

8. No Comments :S
8

9. Doing BDD vs Adopting BDD
9
Do BDD
for
1567

10. BDD Myths
10
• Myth 1: BDD requires a framework or tool
• Myth 2 : BDD is about testing
• Myth 3: BDD has to be done top-down

11. • “Step Away from the Tools”
• “BDD isn’t about the tools.”
<Footer Content: Presentation Title, Partner Name, Other> 11
Liz Keogh
Myth 1: BDD requires a framework or tool

12. • #BDD supports collaboration. If u can’t
collaborate please don’t try using Cucumber as
test automation
<Footer Content: Presentation Title, Partner Name, Other> 12
Myth 2 : BDD is about testing
Seb Rose

13. In fact, BDD isn’t even really about testing. It’s just
a way of capturing those conversations which
happens to provide some tests, and lifts some of
the burden on the testers. If you want to run
additional performance tests, exploratory tests, or
even record some tests, it doesn’t have to come
under the BDD banner. It’s perfectly OK to do
BDD and test things as well.
13
Liz Keogh
Myth 2 : BDD is about testing

14. +Scenario 1: Account is in credit+
Given the account is in credit
And the card is valid
And the dispenser contains cash
When the customer requests cash
Then ensure the account is debited
And ensure cash is dispensed
And ensure the card is returned
14
+Scenario 1: Account is in credit+
Given the account is in credit
And the card is valid
And the dispenser contains cash
When the customer requests cash
Then check that the account is debited
And check that cash is dispensed
And check that the card is returned
And check that nothing happens that shouldn’t
happen and everything else happens that should
happen for all variations of this scenario and all
possible states of the ATM and all possible states of
the customer’s account and all possible states of
the rest of the database and all possible states of
the system as a whole, and anything happening in
the cloud that should not matter but might matter.
James Bach
Myth 2 : BDD is about testing

15. Test iceberg
15

16. 16
“BDD doesn't come with BRAINS kindly use
yours”

17. The Gap
17

18. Complexity
18

19. <Footer Content: Presentation Title, Partner Name, Other> 19
Lets play a game

20. 10 level tower of cards
20

21. 21

22. BDD Workshop, Society General 22

23. BDD Workshop, Society General 23

24. Complexity
24

25. “Time to complete” estimation and problem space
complexity need not be proportional
Task T size
estimation
Time to
complete
Problem
space
complexity
XXL High
XL Low
M High
S low
25
» More time needs to spend discussing
scenarios (with BA ,QA , dev etc )as
problem space complexity is high for
these tasks

26. How to measure complexity
26
Points Complexity Description
1 Just about everyone in the world has done this
2 Lots of people have done this, including someone on our team.
3 Someone in our company has done this, or we have access to expertise
4 Someone in the world did this, but not in our organization (and probably
at a competitor)
5 Nobody in the world has ever done this before
Second Order ignorance
We say second order of ignorance exist if “when I don't know that I
don't know something”.
Liz Keogh

27. Scenario Identification, 3 key pillars
Functional:
-Happy path
-Sad path
-Exceptional
Constraints
Quality
attributes
27

28. Join Coffee Talk
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29. 30
Extras

30. 37
BDD in a nut shell
I have shamelessly copied this pic from Rachel's blog

31. Key Question
38
I have shamelessly copied this pic from Naresh Jain PPT

32. The old school of thought , Inside Out
Test
Code
39
Spec
Inside Out