Gojko Adzic

Creating an Executable Specification from existing manual test scripts might seem as a logical thing to do when starting out with Specification by Example and Agile Acceptance Testing. Such scripts already describe what the system does, and the testers are running them anyway, so automation will surely help. Not really — this is in fact one of the most common failure patterns. Continue Reading »

The long term benefits of agile acceptance testing come from live documentation – a description of the system functionality which is reliable, easily accessible and much easier to read and understand than the code. In order to be effective as live specification, acceptance tests have to be written in a way that enables others to pick them up months or even years later and easily understand what they do, why they are there and what they describe. Here are some simple heuristics that will help you measure and improve your tests to make them better as a live specification. Continue Reading »

Thanks very much for inviting me to speak about agile acceptance testing and specification by example at HSBC today. It was great to chat to you and I must say that your video-conferencing system is really impressive. As promised, here are the slides and links from the presentation.

Online articles and resources

• US Army experiment
• B2 bomber crash report
• F-16 design project
• Tests and Requirements, Requirements and Tests: A Möbius Strip
• Describe-demonstrate-develop
• Rick Mugridge: Doubling the value of automated tests from Google Tech Talks in London in 2006.
• Concordion
• FitNesse
• Agile Testing UK
• Agile acceptance testing info portal

Books

• Bridging the Communication Gap: Specification by Example and Agile Acceptance Testing, my book (also see the PDF edition)
• Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions by Gary Klein
• Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash (Addison-Wesley Signature) by Mary and Tom Poppendieck
• Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design by Gerald Weinberg and Donald C. Gause

Events

• Agile Specifications, Testing and BDD exchange, November 27th, London
• Intro to Specification by Example and Agile Acceptance Testing with Fitnesse , November 30th, London
• Writing software that matters, December 4th, London

Dan North and I met up today and decided to do a joint workshop on behaviour-driven development and specification by example. The workshop will be very practical, focused around the following topics:

• How to communicate effectively with project stakeholders
• Value of specification by example
• How to write good scenarios
• How to spot problems with scenarios and examples and how to fix them
• How to integrate BDD and specification by example into your development process and organisation
• Focusing on writing software that really matters
• Managing code after it is released, using examples and scenarios as live documentation

This will be a unique opportunity to learn BDD and specification by example straight from the horse’s mouth. We’re ironing out the final details and I’ll publish them early next week. For now, I can only say that the workshop will take place in central London mid December this year and that the number of places will be very limited (definitely not more than 30), so if this sounds interesting send me an e-mail or ping me on twitter and I’ll keep you posted.

I organised a workshop on Specification by Example yesterday at the Progressive .NET mini-conference in London, demonstrating how realistic examples are a very effective tool to flush out incorrect assumed rules and point to real business rules in software requirements. Continue Reading »