Behavior Driven Testing (BDT)

Anand Bagmar Software Quality Evangelist

ThoughtWorks

Case Study

• Multiple, long running projects

• Legacy applications

• Integrated

• No Automation - Long regression cycle

• Mini-Waterfall

• Huge cost of fixing defects

Testing Challenges

• No visibility into what is tested

• Outdated tests in QC

• Brittle

• Little / less value

• Maintenance nightmare

• Remove the ambiguity

• Same visibility for all roles on the team

Evolution of Test Frameworks

Behavior Driven

Development (BDD)

Optimized scripts

Record & Playback

Core Framework

Behavior Driven Development (BDD)

• Specify the behavior looking at the system from the outside.

• Collaborate and come up with a good and clear set of Acceptance Criteria

• BDD is an extension of TDD

– primarily a development practice

• Developers translate the Acceptance Criteria into product functionality

Behavior Driven Development (BDD)

Given the account has balance of INR 5000

When the customer requests INR 1000

Then the account is debited by INR 1000

Expected Functionality:

The customer should be able to withdraw money from his account

Behavior Driven Testing (BDT)

• It is an approach to testing

• Work towards the big picture

Given the account is in credit

And the dispenser contains cash

When the customer requests cash

Then ensure the account is debited

And ensure cash is dispensed

And ensure the card is returned

New Expected Functionality:

The customer should be able to withdraw money from his account only if his card is valid

Given the account is in credit

And the card is valid

And the dispenser contains cash

When the customer requests cash

Then ensure the account is debited

And ensure cash is dispensed

And ensure the card is returned

Imperative Scenario

Reference: http://watirmelon.com/2010/12/10/cucumber-imperative-or-declarative-that-is-the-question/

Declarative Scenario

Reference: http://watirmelon.com/2010/12/10/cucumber-imperative-or-declarative-that-is-the-question/

What does this do for me?

• Identify the different user flows / behaviors for the product

• Determine how the functionality under test affects / impacts the above user flows

• Incrementally build up your user flows

What does this do for me?

• Provide visibility

• Automate the right set of tests

• Make your testing efforts more effective

How did we accomplish this?

Who is doing the action?

What is the business functionality?

Actions and verifications / assertions happen implicitly

Long running tests

Current state

Testes running on Hudson / Jenkins Since 1st test was automated

Feature files 33

Scenarios 65

Smoke tests execution time 15 minutes

Regression tests execution time 45 minutes

Test case repository (manual + automated)

Cucumber .feature files with appropriate tagging

Project Management tool Mingle

Its not what I said, its what I

mean!

Are you doing BDD or BDT? Pattern Testing Type

The QA team does Test Automation along with other testing responsibilities.

BDT

The QA team focuses on defining acceptance criteria, doing manual / ad-hoc / exploratory testing, etc. and the development team itself will do Functional Test Automation.

BDD

The QA team focuses on defining acceptance criteria, doing manual / ad-hoc / exploratory testing, etc. and pairs with the development team to do Functional Test Automation.

BDD + BDT

Tools to enable BDD / BDT

• Cucumber

• JBehave

• SpecFlow

• Twist

Anand.Bagmar@thoughtworks.com

abagmar@gmail.com