Group items tagged

specification by example:

 Gherkin is one of the most popular languages for writing formal behavior specifications – it captures behaviors as “Given-When-Then” scenarios.

Quick Points BDD is specification by example. When someone says “BDD”, immediately think of “Given-When-Then”. BDD focuses on behavior first. Behavior scenarios are the cornerstone of BDD. BDD is a refinement of the Agile process, not an overhaul. It formalizes acceptance criteria and test coverage. BDD is a paradigm shift. Behaviors become the team’s main focus.

12 Awesome Benefits

behavior-driven development

Testing Recommendations

Since BDD focuses on actual feature behavior, behavior specs are best for higher-level, functional, black box tests. For example, BDD is great for testing APIs and web UIs.

Gherkin excels for acceptance testing

User Stories1730£55,000-1,814 (1.94%)335

Cucumber279-20£60,000+14.28%1,051 (1.12%)143

User Acceptance Testing284-56£47,500-5.00%1,039 (1.11%)193

Business Cases311-71£56,878-5.20%932 (1.00%)210

Use Case3170£63,500+10.43%917 (0.98%)206

User Experience Designer443-30£52,500-4.54%581 (0.62%)101

Gherkin598-4£52,500-331 (0.35%)45

Epic User Stories616+64£57,542-7.93%304 (0.33%)50

A new effort on Binary Code Scanners - Similar to source code security analyzers, this class of tool analyzes a compiled binary application, including libraries, and provides a report of code weakness over the entire application.

The SAMATE Reference Dataset (SRD) - A community repository of example code and other artifacts to help end users evaluate tools and developers test their methods

Third annual Static Analysis Tools Exposition, which is in progress. The goals are to enable empirical research based on large test sets, encourage improvement of tools, and speed tool adoption by objectively demonstrating their use on real software.

Using these semi-formal structures, we can both Assert that use cases really are requirements and need a basic structure, and also Allow people to write whatever they want when they need to.

Here is the semi-formal structure

Linking use cases to actors’ goals

If the software supports those goals, the software will yield the greatest business value.

goals sometimes fail

failure handling

Therefore, a use case is structured into two sections: the sequence of actions when everything goes well, followed by various small sequences describing what happens when the various goals and subgoals fail.

Why do we write things in the use case that are not externally visible behaviors?

contract between stakeholders

there remained a split between those who still wanted to keep use cases short and informal and those who wanted them to be detailed

The Stakeholders and Interests model fills the holes in the Actors and Goals model

Use cases should not be used to describe UI designs

Use cases have a basic mismatch with feature lists

Use cases are not test plans or test cases

it’s just that by the time I get subgoals at a good level and remove the design specifics, the task is less than nine step

The greatest value of the use case does not lie in the main scenario, but in alternative behaviors

If the main scenario is between three and nine steps long, the total use case might only be two or three pages long, which is long enough.

readable use cases might actually get read

User stories and backlog items don’t give the designers a context to work from

don’t give the project team any sense of “completeness

don’t provide a good-enough mechanism for looking ahead at the difficulty of upcoming work

Staring at the set of extension conditions in a use case lets the analysts suss out which ones will be easy and which will be difficult, and to stage their research accordingly

Here 5 reasons why I still write use cases

The list of goal names provides executives with the shortest summary of what the system will contribute to the business and the users

The main success scenario of each use case provides everyone involved with an agreement as to what the system will basically do, also, sometimes more importantly, what it will not do.

The extension conditions of each use case provide the requirements analysts a framework for investigating all the little, niggling things that somehow take up 80% of the development time and budget

The use case extension scenario fragments provide answers to the many detailed, often tricky business questions

The full use case set shows that the investigators have throught through every user’s needs, every goal they have with respect to the system, and every business variant involved

how much should be written up front to get the project estimate into a safe place

several sticky parts for people using use cases

iteration/sprint lengths are so short that it is not practical to implement an entire use case in just one of them.

Writing good use cases (or any other requirements) requires thinking, communicating, and thinking again. It is much easier just to write user-story tags on index cards and let the project blow up later

We have adopted many of the concepts of Agile development—such as daily build and test, build the smallest piece of functionality that delivers value, etc.—but have retained our up-front work. It’s worked extremely well

Shift Left

Artifacts

Automation

Test-Driven

Code Reuse

Parameterization

Variation

Momentum

Adaptability