Examining Behavior-Driven Development

Recently, I had an interesting talk with my girlfriend. She has been working with Object Oriented Programming for a while and got interested in Behavior-Driven Development. This interest appeared because of a suggestion from her coworker who wanted to build test cases using Cucumber and suggested BDD as the way to go when programming. I became curious about this topic too and I thought it would be interesting for my followers to get familiar with this concept through one of my blog posts. So, we are here. Today, we are going to get better acquainted with the basics of Behavior-Driven Development and examine its advantages and disadvantages. I will try to explain everything in simple words to make sure everyone understands this! Let’s start

Introduction to Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)

Behavior-Driven Development refers to a method of coding that is completely concentrated on the user experience expectations. This is one of the ways to improve communication between the business and development and push their cooperation to a higher level. Plus, this helps to clearly define its goals, providing more value both to this business and to the developers.

To make this contact better, BDD applies simple language. Both machines and users can go along with it without difficulties. This process involves not only developers. Business users take part in it as well. That’s the reason why communication must be simple since it boosts the productivity of collaboration. This methodology helps business users to come up with the most beneficial idea, meaning they will be able to clearly form their requests and provide all the necessary details about the project. Developers, at the same time, stay attentive to the needs of the business. BDD might be applied through various means:

• A language that clearly describes the expected behavior of the solution
• An instrument for cooperation (between everyone from testers, engineers, and even product managers)
• A system built to automatically test the desired behaviors

Let’s move on to understand the stages of the Behavior-Driven Development process

Behavior-Driven Development: Getting Started

BBD implementation requires taking 3 important steps:

• Discovery
• Formulation
• Automation

We shouldn’t be in a hurry, so let’s discuss how we get started with Behavior-Driven Development. Since this should be an Agile project, we have to start with a User Story. This is an aspect that contains a lot of information about the future project. After revealing a User Story, developers can get down to the Discovery step.

The objective of any project is to create a sustainable product that will correspond to all the requirements. These requirements are uncovered at the Discovery stage. In BDD, all participants of the process should be involved in Discovery. It helps to specify the task and the deadlines more accurately. During such discussions, developers can explain to business users their capabilities, which helps businesses to realize the prospects of the product and related solutions. In general, the major function of the Discovery stage is to provide all participants of the process with the possibility to discuss all the relevant issues at the beginning and to save time.

The testing process shouldn’t be neglected as well. This is a stage where business users and developers see which functions and peculiarities can improve the end product. The testing process should be simple and understandable. When discussing a project with your clients, you will better understand what should be tested and what the expected results of testing are. At this stage, you might also come up with other successful cases that might be good examples. This accelerates the process of new product building because you can project what you’ll have before the release. Alongside this, it helps to set realistic objectives and deadlines.

The stage that comes after the Discovery process is called Formulation. At the previous stage, you should have considered one or several examples. At this stage, you take these examples and convert them into structured documentation. This shows that you really understand all the pre-specified requirements. Thanks to the fact that BDD applies a simple language, you can receive understandable feedback from the whole team. This common understanding also helps to make the examples automated, which is necessary to guide a team through the development process. When the formulation is over, you get to the third stage – Automation. Writing Automated tests becomes easier when you have detailed documentation of the project. As the test is ready, it’s likely to fail because not all features are implemented. The test is necessary to drive the development of the code. While completing several tests, you have a better understanding of what should be written in the end. This also helps to save time. Additionally, your team can share feedback after each test. What’s important is that you have to ensure that the feedback is quick and repeatable. This will help you to avoid manual regression testing.

All these stages are very important for the development process because they help to control the changes. Each time you go through your product again, you add not only extra features but also make it more sustainable and valuable for the end users. This is how you satisfy all the requirements and get closer to a perfect product.

Advantages of Behavior-Driven Development

Above, we’ve already touched on a few benefits of using BDD. Here is a more exact list of why this method is beneficial:

• BDD is good even for users with a low level of skills because this method applies a simple language and has an easy learning curve.
• BDD provides better visibility and helps to reach a wider audience of potential users.
• The BDD methodology helps to clearly define the goals of the projects and meet them without the necessity to implement any significant changes at the final stages.
• The BDD methodology improves collaboration between the developers and users.

These are not the only advantages. However, to be objective, I should also explain to you the disadvantages of the BDD methodology.

Disadvantages of Behavior-Driven Development

These are the most common drawbacks you can face when relying on Behavior-Driven development.

• The requirements for the project must be very precise.
• If you apply a Waterfall approach, BDD won’t be quite efficient because this methodology is Agile.
• Even though BDD makes the process simple, people testing the product still should be technically skilled.
• To work with BDD, the user should have prior exposure to TDD (Test Driven Development) concepts

An Actual Formula of BDD

It’s all good to realize both key advantages and disadvantages of Behavior-Driven Development. However, I believe that in order to get a better understanding of the concept you should take a look at a real example. Usually, BDD projects follow the Given-When-Then format:

• Given, the starting logic, or initial context
• When, the action which is performed
• Then, the expected outcome of the action

Final word

In this review, we learned what Behavior-Driven Development is and how it actually works. I also tried to explain in what way this simple methodology helps to make communication between developers and business users more efficient. I provided all steps involved in this process and outlines the advantages and disadvantages of using BDD in real conditions. You can even see a formula for a real BDD project.

I don’t want to claim that BDD is more efficient than Object-Oriented Programming but I still believe that it’s quite interesting to know more about this exact approach. Do you have any experience in BDD? If yes, I would be glad to learn more about your experiences and impressions in the comments below my post. I hope, this article will be not only interesting but useful for you as well. Maybe, the implementation of this approach is what you need to improve your communication with business users. Anyway, learning something new is always helpful. Follow my blog to have the possibility to do this regularly!