BDD in Action

Book excerpt: Summary BDD in Action teaches you the Behavior-Driven Development model and shows you how to integrate it into your existing development process. First you'll learn how to apply BDD to requirements analysis to define features that focus your development efforts on underlying business goals. Then, you'll discover how to automate acceptance criteria and use tests to guide and report on the development process. Along the way, you'll apply BDD principles at the coding level to write more maintainable and better documented code. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology You can't write good software if you don't understand what it's supposed to do. Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) encourages teams to use conversation and concrete examples to build up a shared understanding of how an application should work and which features really matter. With an emerging body of best practices and sophisticated new tools that assist in requirement analysis and test automation, BDD has become a hot, mainstream practice. About the Book BDD in Action teaches you BDD principles and practices and shows you how to integrate them into your existing development process, no matter what language you use. First, you'll apply BDD to requirements analysis so you can focus your development efforts on underlying business goals. Then, you'll discover how to automate acceptance criteria and use tests to guide and report on the development process. Along the way, you'll apply BDD principles at the coding level to write more maintainable and better documented code. No prior experience with BDD is required. What's Inside BDD theory and practice How BDD will affect your team BDD for acceptance, integration, and unit testing Examples in Java, .NET, JavaScript, and more Reporting and living documentation About the Author John Ferguson Smart is a specialist in BDD, automated testing, and software lifecycle development optimization. Table of Contents PART 1: FIRST STEPS Building software that makes a difference BDD—the whirlwind tour PART 2: WHAT DO I WANT? DEFINING REQUIREMENTS USING BDD Understanding the business goals: Feature Injection and related techniques Defining and illustrating features From examples to executable specifications Automating the scenarios PART 3: HOW DO I BUILD IT? CODING THE BDD WAY From executable specifications to rock-solid automated acceptance tests Automating acceptance criteria for the UI layer Automating acceptance criteria for non-UI requirements BDD and unit testing PART 4: TAKING BDD FURTHER Living Documentation: reporting and project management BDD in the build process