BDD for Non-Programmers: Live Workshop

• An understanding of user requirements concepts
• A discerning eye for software goodness and software inadequacies, from an end-user perspective
• Programming and testing experience are not required

Audience

• Product owners and managers
• Business analysts
• Manual testers
• End-users of a software product or system
• Non-engineers and non-coders involved in product design

BDD, or Behavior Driven Development, is an Agile software development technique that encourages collaboration among developers, quality assurance teams and non-technical business people throughout the planning, development and testing cycle of a software project.

This instructor-led, live workshop begins with an introduction to BDD, what it is and how it is used by companies to promote good software design, development and testing. We do this from a non-engineering point-of-view, with an eye on the end-users, their requirements, language, and way of thinking. We also address the communication challenges that business stakeholders are likely to encounter as they work closer with their technical-minded peers.

By the end of this training, participants will know how to:

• Write succinct user stories that capture the usage patterns of real users of the software.
• Translate their user stories into the behavioral language of BDD (Given, When, Then.)
• Derive test cases from these stories, for use by engineers to implement and test.
• Understand the relationship between product requirements, acceptance criteria, and test cases.
• Demystify the technical jargon that impedes communication and understanding.
• Install and use great tools for writing BDD feature files.
• Understand and appreciate what happens once the work is handed to engineers.
• Play a more active role in the iterative development cycle.

Format of the course

• A interactive, instructor-led workshop with lots of activities and hands-on practice.

Notes

• The workshop includes case studies and software samples. To customize the materials to your company's product and situation, please contact us to arrange.

Day 01

Introduction

• Why BDD?
• BDD as an extension of Agile
• Agenda for Day 01

Applying BDD at Different Stages in the Software Development Cycle

• Before development
• During development
• After development

One Language to Rule Them All

• Engineers and non-engineers speak different languages
• Bridging the gap through BDD
• A preview of the BDD language: Gherkin

The Different Roles of BDD

• BDD as product requirements (for product owner)
• BDD as acceptance criteria (for developers)
• BDD as test cases (for testers)
• BDD as a description of the product (for other stake holders)

Back to Agile: It All Starts with User Stories

• Overview of the Agile development cycle
• The role of User Stories in Agile development

Q&A Session and Discussion

Quiz

Creating a Good User Story

• Using the right language
  • Role, Action, Outcome
• A sample User Story

Activity - Writing a User Story

• Writing your first User Story - individual activity
• Tightening your User Stories - team activity
• Delivering your User Story - team activity

User Stories in Real Projects

• Team dynamics
• Tools and techniques
• User Stories in the software development cycle

On to BDD

• Extending the User Story
• Introducing the Feature File
• Capturing the expected behavior of software
• Imagining what "unexpected" behavior looks like

Creating a Good Feature File

• Using the right language (Gherkin)
  • Given, When, Then
• A sample Feature File

Activity - Writing a Feature File - PART 01

• Writing your first Feature File - individual activity
  • Feature section
  • Scenario section
• Tightening your Feature File - team activity
• Delivering your Feature File - team activity

Feature Files in Real Projects

• Team dynamics
• Tools and techniques
• User Stories in the software development cycle

Q&A Session and Discussion

Quiz

Setting up Your Environment

• Making Gherkin pretty
• The joy of productivity

Activity - Writing a Feature File - PART 02

• Writing your Feature File - individual activity
  • Passing multiple arguments to your Scenario
  • Scenario Outline section
• Tightening your Feature File - team activity
• Delivering your Feature File - team activity

Q&A Session and Discussion

Quiz

Closing Remarks

Day 02

Introduction

• Recap of previous day
• Agenda for Day 02

Your Own Product - An Introspection

• Describing your product
• Drawing a picture of your product

Extending Test Coverage

• Usability of the system
• Business requirements
• Business processes

Activity - Writing a Feature File - PART 03

• Writing your Feature File - individual activity
  • Examples section
  • Reusing data and scenarios
  • Organizing features and scenarios with tags
• Tightening your Feature File - team activity
• Delivering your Feature File - team activity

Q&A Session and Discussion

Quiz

The Feature File - What to Leave Out

• What to leave to the engineers
  • Low-level functionality (unit tests)
  • Exhaustive cross-component functionality (integration and API testing)

Q&A Session and Discussion

Quiz

Your Own Product - An Introspection

• How usable is your product?
• How usable is your product to outside users?

Communication with People outside Your Team

Summary and Next Steps