Category Archives: bdd

Scenarios using custom DSLs

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Liz

One of my clients recently asked me how often I use Cucumber or JBehave in my own projects. Hardly ever, is the answer, so I want to show you what I do instead. The English-language Gherkin syntax is hard to … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd | 13 Comments

On Multiple Givens, Whens and Thens

Posted on May 6, 2019 by Liz

I wrote this as a reply to user RHarris’s question on StackOverflow, but thought it might be easier to find here too. The login scenario and the access record here are adapted from their question. What contexts should we include … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd, stakeholders | 5 Comments

BDD: A Three-Headed Monster

Posted on December 14, 2015 by Liz

Back in Greek mythology, there was a dog called Cerberus. It guarded the gate to the underworld, and it had three heads. There was a great guy called Heracles (Hercules in Latin) who was a demi-god, which means he would … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd, deliberate discovery, stories, testing | 4 Comments

Capabilities and Learning Outcomes

Posted on September 17, 2015 by Liz

When I started training, I taught topics. Lots of topics! Nowadays, thanks to some help from Marian Willeke and her incredible understanding of how adults learn, I get to teach capabilities instead. It’s much more fun. This is how I … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd, learning models | 3 Comments

Negative Scenarios in BDD

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Liz

One problem I hear repeatedly from people is that they can’t find a good place to start talking about scenarios. An easy trick is to find the person who fought to get the budget for the project (the primary stakeholder) … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd | 3 Comments

What is BDD?

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Liz

At #CukeUp today, there’s going to be a panel on defining BDD, again. BDD is hard to define, for good reason. First, because to do so would be to say “This is BDD” and “This is not BDD”. When you’ve … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd, conference | 10 Comments

A Little Tense

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Liz

Following on from my last blog post about deriving Gherkin from conversations, I wanted to share some tips on tenses. This is beginner stuff, but it turns out there are a lot of beginners out there! It also isn’t gospel, … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd | 2 Comments

Deriving Gherkin from Real Conversations

Posted on September 1, 2014 by Liz

The “Given, When, Then” format was originally developed by Dan North and Chris Matts, way back in 2004. It was originally intended as a way of describing class behaviour using something that didn’t involve testing. It was a way of … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd | 1 Comment

A dev walks into a bar…

Posted on August 21, 2014 by Liz

…and says to the barman, “I’m in the bar. I’m thirsty. I have £10.23 in my wallet.” “Great,” says the barman. “What can I get you?” The dev looks around. “When you take that glass and put it in front … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd | 2 Comments

Using BDD as a Sensemaking Technique

Posted on July 29, 2014 by Liz

A while back, I wrote about Cynefin, a framework for making sense of the world, and for approaching different situations and problems depending on how much certainty or uncertainty they have. As a quick summary, Cynefin has five domains: Simple … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd, complexity, cynefin | 3 Comments