This post is part of the “Behavior Driven Development (BDD): Value Through Collaboration” series.
- Part 1: Introduction
- Part 2: Narrative
- Part 3: Scenarios
- Part 4: Automation
Automation
The first 3 posts explored the process to define project requirements as behaviors. Once you have mastered writing BDD stories you are ready to start the journey towards the automation of scenarios.
Execution of BDD scenarios can be accomplished using many different frameworks. Some of them are JBehave (Java), Cucumber (Ruby), RSpec (Ruby), SpecFlow (.Net), and Jasmine (JavaScript). This post will use examples from JBehave. With slight modifications, they can be applied to any other framework. The above-mentioned frameworks provide installation instructions and documentation on how to write code that supports BDD. This article focuses mostly on the best practice and ways to avoid some of the common pitfalls. For detailed installation instructions and documentation, please consult the website of the selected framework.
Decision on which framework to choose should be based on which technology your team is most comfortable with, as well as the support it provides for the implementation of the phases described below. Next post in this series will provide comparison of different BDD frameworks.
Successful implementation of the BDD automation should be done in three phases.
- Create library of normalized steps.
- Combine steps into composites.
- Empower scenarios with examples tables.
You should start with the first phase. As soon as enough steps have been created to support the first scenario, you can start with execution of the other two phases. From there on, work on all three phases should be done in parallel.
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