Welcome back to our video series designed to jump-start your understanding of the core principles and practices of Agile software engineering. In this seventh installment, Lean-Agile thought leader Ken Pugh tackles the question of how to create a shared understanding of code behavior.

Customers, developers, and testers think about behavior from multiple perspectives. So, how can you avoid problems that arise when people in this triad of roles think about behavior differently? Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) offers a solution.

Ken lays out three phases of BDD—discovering the behavior the customer desires, formulating tests, and test automation. It’s the triad’s discussion about the desired behavior that leads to the test.  

Ken also talks about defining business domain terms to use in validating code behavior, and the importance of separating business rule tests and scenario tests. Be sure to check out Ken’s helpful compare-and-contrast of BDD and Acceptance Test-Driven Development. Watch here.

Join us next time for the eighth video in our series which will explore the why and how of communicating with models.

Go here to watch the previous video in the series about scenarios.

Learn more about the Agile Software Engineering course here.   

Stay SAFe,

—Harry