What Is BDD?

BDD is the acronym for Behavior Driven Development. It is a development method that allows the product owners, programmers, and testers to collaborate using basic text language – simple English. Misunderstandings, assumptions, and flawed expectations are the primary reason behind frustration, duplicated work, and wasted time in software development. This was because of the disconnect between business and development. Developers frequently misjudge what business analysts or product owners require and the business side misconstrue what developers are trying to achieve.

Here’s where BDD bridges the gap. It facilitates and improves communication between technical and non-technical teams because everyone can comprehend what is going on in the software project. BDD is the first step in the development process that focuses on how the application behaves from the end user point of view with minimal code involvement.

BDD Origins

To better understand BDD’s meaning and purpose, let’s briefly look at life before BDD. In Agile environments, Test-Driven Development (TDD) is widely used, and it works well where everyone is technically skilled. TDD focuses on the testing that programmers perform.

The first test written and created by developers is a unit test. They then implement the code so that it passes that test. In contrast, the purpose of BDD is to include all stakeholders in the development process by using less technical jargon to demonstrate how to build a feature based on its behavior.

BDD Features

• The language used to express the behavior is basic and in a single format that everyone engaged in the implementation can understand without needing coding experience.
• It provides a platform for the programmer, software tester, and business analyst to collaborate.
• It helps establish a template for the product documentation.
• BDD procedures can be transformed into executable test scripts for QA resources and automating regression testing.
• BDD concentrates on the system’s final behavior, or how it should behave, rather than how it should be implemented. The procedure begins with the creation of a scenario that reflects the intended behavior.
• Any code changes do not affect the written BDD scenarios.
• BDD is supported by a number of tools designed for different programming languages and platforms that include (but not limited to) Cucumber (Ruby framework), Cucumber-js (JavaScript framework), SpecFlow (.NET framework), and Lettuce (Python framework).

Mindset Change for DevOps

In software development, it’s not uncommon to try to add as many features as possible for the sake of delivery, but this is a prevalent problem and cause of project failures. Rather than striving to incorporate a mass of features, software companies should think about how the features will support the users’ behavior and business goals.

Every new or modified capability in the app should aid the business or corporation in achieving its objectives, whether those objectives are to increase profits, improve utilization, or reduce waste. To meet business requirements, you must first determine what you want the program to accomplish from a business standpoint.

It’s vital to remember that every feature requires the same level of attention, or even development practices. Furthermore, the development team’s emphasis can be stretched too thinly throughout an entire backlog.

Usage-centric design is a software development strategy in which each single bit of deliverable functionality is centered on the goals and habits of users. And it starts with identifying who the feature’s target audience is. From there, BDD scenarios are created to build software that meets the needs of all users by concentrating on the users’ actions. BDD makes this process easier.

The fundamental reason for BDD’s positive adoption is that it is based on how people naturally speak. When we ask our clients for examples of how they anticipate a given feature to be delivered, they respond with phrases like “when I do this or that, then XYZ should happen.”

Testing in BDD

BDD is a tool that allows programmers, testers, and businesspeople to sit down at the same table and agree on the features that should be developed. Because the customers and developers collaborated throughout the development cycle of the feature, this strategy saves effort, time, and money if there are any faults after the production deployment.

1. Describe the application’s behavior feature by feature. The behavior of an application is written in simple English by the product owner/business analyst or tester in a “Feature File”.

   A Feature File is structured using a line-oriented and keyword-based format to describe the Scenario, which is a feature. It provides the context (Given), expected actions (When), and a result (Then). A basic example is the login process for an application.

   Scenario: User Login
   Given I open the login page
   When I enter my “username”
   And I enter my “password”
   And I click on “Login”
   Then I am successfully logged in

2. Developers convert the Feature Files into executable test scripts for automated testing.
3. The functional code is then implemented according to the expected behavior.
4. The code is tested against the behavior described in the Feature File.
5. If required, code changes are made so that it passes the scenario and code can be refactored or reorganized to ensure it’s readable, re-usable, and clean.
6. Repeat these steps for every user action executed in the application.

BDD Key Advantages

• Business-critical features are provided first to meet business goals.
• All development efforts meet user requirements and can be traced back to specific business goals.
• Everyone regardless of technical skill has complete visibility into the project’s development.
• Improved code quality improves the development feedback loop, lowers maintenance expenses and decreases project risk.

Conclusion

The method of behavior-driven development is highly collaborative. The foundation of BDD is to put the product owners/business analysts, testers, and developers on the same page and have a meaningful debate about each feature before development begins.

Regardless of the platform, technology, or language you use to deploy an app, one thing remains constant – every app must adapt to succeed. Markets, technologies, and business goals change, which present new opportunities on a daily basis. As a result, the manner in which we build software should reflect this constant state of flux.

Members of the team start with the fundamentals, such as learning the structure of BDD tools and becoming adept in scenario writing. The implementation of BDD has a significant influence on project delivery by shifting to delivering commercial value and developing features that are well-understood by both technical and business stakeholders.