BDD: From Definity to Beyond

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BDD is a conversation enabler, allowing business people, developers and testers to strive for a shared understanding of business rules and objectives. Even without the conversation, common language, such as “Given… When… Then” is often used to describe business scenarios, acceptance criteria and tests, facilitating fluency between the three.

However, scenarios, criteria and tests each serve a different purpose, and sometimes framing each as “Given, when, then” constructs is not intuitive. Avoiding a prescribed definitive approach to story writing, yet effectively using a common language to satisfy each objective is challenging.

This talk will borrow from causal theory to illustrate the fundamental real-world principle underlying a “Given, When, Then” assertion. The premise of dispositional causality is that in order to see an Effect (then), there must be combination of Disposition (given), and Trigger (when). An understanding of simple causal concepts will help translate natural language into effective scenarios, criteria and tests. It will also help to clarify the difference between the three, so that business scenarios are fully explored, while acceptance criteria are succinctly expressed and test coverage is thorough.

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