How Do You Handle Incomplete Behavior-Driven Development Requirements?

Behavioral-Driven Development offers advantages in automated testing by prioritizing the system’s behavior over the complexities of code implementation. BDD relies on natural language to articulate the system’s behavior and expected results. 

It involves active participation from stakeholders – including customers, developers, testers, and other relevant individuals – fostering collaborative discussions and visual representations to clarify the system’s behavior.

What is Behavior-driven development?

Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) is a methodology within Agile software development inspired by Test-Driven Development (TDD). It focuses on creating tests that showcase the system’s behavior, advocating for using straightforward language and examples accessible to all involved in the development process.

The aim is to improve understanding of the system’s behavior through discussions and tangible illustrations. This approach amalgamates techniques from Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Domain-Driven Development (DDD) to propose varied methods for developing features based on the system’s behavior.

Also Read: How Do You Define Your Role as an Agile Tester?

Advantages of Behavioral Driven Development (BDD):

• Enhanced comprehension of business goals and customer requirements.
• Widens accessibility to a broader customer base by utilizing non-technical languages.
• Facilitates the definition of acceptance criteria before initiating development.
• Focuses on understanding the system’s behavior from both client and developer perspectives.
• Averts unnecessary features while incorporating essential functionalities.
• Minimizes efforts required for addressing defects after modification or deployment.
• Prevents misinterpretations during the development phase.
• Promotes collaboration among team members by engaging stakeholders in shared objectives.
• Encourages the use of automated testing tools, reducing testing time and effort and thus enabling quicker issue detection and resolution.
• Enables integration with Continuous Integration and Delivery processes, automating software build, testing, and deployment, resulting in faster feedback loops and feature delivery.
• Detailed documentation of user stories, acceptance criteria, and step definitions enhances project documentation, aiding system maintenance and updates.
• Prioritizes features based on customer importance, ensuring the development team focuses on delivering significant value to the business.

Limitations of Behavioral-Driven Development:

• Developing and keeping extensive documentation like user stories, acceptance criteria, and step definitions in BDD can demand a significant amount of time.
• The involvement of all stakeholders, especially those without technical expertise, presents a challenge when implementing BDD.
• The effectiveness of BDD tests heavily relies on the accuracy and comprehensiveness of initial requirements and user stories. Inadequate or imprecise requirements can lead to insufficient test coverage and subsequent bugs.
• BDD might not be well-suited for projects with short development cycles or ones that undergo frequent changes in requirements.

The Three Amigos in Behavior-Driven Development

“The Three Amigos” represent the pivotal roles involved in software production: business, development, and testing. Each role contributes its unique perspective, and successful software outcomes arise from effective collaboration among these stakeholders. In Agile practices, convening meetings involving the Three Amigos is common during grooming or planning sessions.

Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) amplifies the implementation of ‘The Three Amigos’ concept. BDD enables participation from all stakeholders by utilizing Gherkin, a language akin to plain English. Feature files in BDD hold diverse meanings:

• They serve as requirements for product owners.
• They function as acceptance criteria for developers.
• They act as test cases for testers.
• They become scripts for automation specialists.
• They provide descriptions for other involved parties.

BDD nurtures robust collaboration since feature files resonate with all stakeholders, or “amigos.” These files act like receipts, serving as tangible proof of what the team is set to deliver.

Behavior-Driven Sprints

Understanding the significance of BDD in a sprint highlights its impact:

• Feature files originate during grooming sessions. As the team prepares user stories for the backlog, acceptance criteria are delineated in Gherkin. With its readability, even non-technical members, particularly product owners, can contribute effectively during the three Amigos meetings.
• Techniques like Example Mapping streamline this collaborative process. During planning, stakeholders gain a comprehensive understanding of the expected behavior for each feature. This clarity fosters more meaningful conversations, and any necessary clarifications can be directly incorporated into the feature files.
• At the sprint’s onset, the existence of feature files eliminates ambiguity. Developers understand what to build, and testers know what to test.
• Test automation commences promptly as scenario steps are already detailed. Some step definitions might already exist, facilitating implementation even before the developer commits the product code.
• Manual testers are informed from the start about which tests will be automated and which require manual execution. This enables better test planning and allows testers to focus more on exploratory testing, which enhances bug detection capabilities.

How do you handle incomplete behavior-driven development requirements?

• Ensure Clarity in Intent:

Engage with the product owner, developers, and stakeholders to clarify the intent behind the BDD requirements. Pose questions to grasp the business value, user needs, and scenario acceptance criteria. 

Utilize examples and diagrams to visually depict expected outcomes and prevent misinterpretations. Consider using automation tools like Cucumber or SpecFlow to validate BDD scenarios with the product owner.

• Refining the language of BDD requirements

This involves enhancing precision and testability following the clarification of intent. To achieve this:

Employ the Given-When-Then structure to frame scenarios distinctly, eliminating ambiguous terms such as “sometimes,” “often,” or “quickly.” Use straightforward, understandable language accessible to all without delving into technical jargon or implementation intricacies.

Utilize parameters and data tables to manage various inputs and outputs, ensuring a comprehensive approach to handling different scenarios. This helps in creating clear, concise, and more understandable BDD requirements.

• Crafting BDD requirements that are clearer, more concise, and easily understood

Enhancing precision and testability in BDD requirements after establishing intent involves several steps:

Utilize the Given-When-Then structure to distinctly present scenarios, removing ambiguous terms like “sometimes,” “often,” or “quickly.” Choose straightforward, universally understandable language devoid of technical jargon or complex implementation details.

Leverage parameters and data tables to manage diverse inputs and outputs, ensuring a comprehensive approach for handling various scenarios. 

• Continuously adapting and learning from the experience with BDD requirements

Keep a record of encountered changes, challenges, and best practices, documenting them for future use. Solicit feedback from the product owner, developers, and fellow testers to enhance your BDD testing skills and processes. Embrace the lessons learned from both failures and accomplishments, as they contribute to the ongoing enhancement of BDD testing quality and efficiency.

• Utilize heuristics as a complement to your BDD testing strategy

Heuristics, serving as practical rules or guidelines, aid in more effective and efficient testing. For instance, employ the CRUD heuristic (create, read, update, delete) to assess a system’s fundamental functionality. Additionally, consider implementing the FEW HICCUPPS heuristic (familiarity, explainability, world, history, image, comparable products, claims, user expectations, product, purpose, and statutes) to evaluate the consistency of a system.

Exploratory testing constitutes a dynamic and creative approach to testing, driven by curiosity, intuition, and continuous learning. This method involves designing and executing tests to uncover new scenarios, explore boundaries and exceptions, and identify potential bugs that might remain undetected through BDD testing alone.

Best Practices in Implementing BDD

Here are recommended best practices for adopting BDD:

• Concise Descriptions: Ensure your features have concise and logical titles and descriptions. Lengthy descriptions can become tedious and deter stakeholders. A feature’s description should succinctly summarize its scope and context.
• Consistent Format: Selecting a single format for writing features is crucial in BDD. All feature files should follow the chosen format. This consistency aids newcomers in understanding the features and their context more easily.
• Short Backgrounds: Incorporate a background section for shared steps in each scenario within your feature file whenever feasible. This background helps eliminate repetitive tasks and prevents redundancy across feature files. Aim to keep the background concise, preferably within four lines.

Challenges Associated with Test Automation

Within an agile development process, test automation stands as a critical need. It involves establishing a specialized software framework dedicated to automating primary solution tests. As the solution grows in complexity, the testing framework becomes increasingly intricate. Once a stage is reached where numerous test cases and actions need execution with each release, the significance of automation testing becomes evident.

Here are the primary challenges testers encounter in test automation:

Implementation difficulties arise due to the lack of advanced features in tools capable of handling variations within the application under test.

Challenges emerge regarding test data availability and environmental stability. The absence of supported environments hinders testers’ ability to scrutinize applications across various browsers and platforms.

Despite automation’s established existence, the skill set of QA professionals might sometimes fall short in executing an automation project entirely, particularly for newcomers to test automation.

Nonetheless, cloud-based platforms like LambdaTest mitigate these hurdles, allowing users to harness the full potential of automation testing. LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that enables testing across 3000+ browsers and browser versions without needing an in-house device lab setup. Its cloud-based Selenium grid alleviates the burden of maintaining extensive device labs.

Also Read: Exploring Career Paths in Computer Science Jobs

Conclusion

Behavior-Driven Development proves to be an astute strategy within the Agile methodology. Its adaptability across diverse technologies makes it an ideal starting point for both the development and testing processes.

Emphasizing robust stakeholder collaboration, promoting transparent communication, and steering away from viewing testing as a solitary endeavor, Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) can transform the landscape of software testing.