Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) with Cucumber/SpecFlow

Increasingly, you see software development teams going agile. Here it is important that you arrive at good specifications and tests in a faster and better way. BDD helps teams in this process. BDD is a ‘shift left’ oriented approach where the business analysts, testers and developers together draw up the specifications/requirements in their domain-specific language based on User Stories. This collaboration and working through examples creates a “shared understanding. The prepared specifications/requirements are then also the tests to be performed. Eventually, these prepared tests can be used directly to automate with tools such as Cucumber and SpecFlow.

Example of a BDD feature / scenario

With Java/Cucumber and/or C#/SpecFlow
The test-first approach ensures that tests are created first by the business analyst, tester and developer in their domain-specific language before any programming is done. Therefore, the final developed system must meet the tests already established. After all, those tests must be able to be performed successfully.

The shared understanding ensures that it is clear to both the business analyst, tester and developer exactly what a User Story must satisfy. Because of the test-first approach, the exact specifications and requirements are clear to everyone beforehand.