Behavior Driven Development (BDD): An Introduction

• By Admin
• Posted on 18/09/2024

Behavior-driven development or BDD is a software development methodology. It emphasizes the behavior of the code. This approach encourages the developer to focus on only the application behavior. By doing so, it helps in avoiding excessive coding, or unnecessary features.

BDD primarily aims to improve communication and documentation clarity. It also increases software quality.

Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and its importance 

Increasing collaboration and communication between team members of different groups is the prime objective of BDD. The development meets business objectives with the help of BDD, which ensures that developers and QA engineers speak the same language. 

By using BDD, the development team built living documentation of an app to carry out automated testing. To learn how it is possible, you have to join an Automated Testing Training course. 

Core Concepts of BDD

• Behavior Based Development: Defining business needs through user behavior.
• User Stories and Scenarios: Clearly defined stories based on user needs.
• Given-When-Then Format: A simple format for describing user behavior.
• Natural Language (Gherkin): Writing a feature in a language everyone can understand.
• Clear Communication: Coordination between technical and non-technical team members.
• Automated Testing: Converting feature behavior into test cases that can be used for writing code.
• Continuous Feedback: Taking feedback during development.

8 key behaviors of BDD
Business Understanding:

1. Business Objectives: Better understanding of the business objectives of the project.  Knowing what problem to solve or what opportunity to work on is important.
2. Stakeholder Awareness: Clarity on the needs and expectations of stakeholders (eg: customers, users, business managers). 
3. Business Rules: A clear grasp of the business rules or protocols that a project or feature must adhere to helps ensure that development is progressing correctly.
4. User-Centric Approach: Development is done keeping user needs in mind. Features should be of value to the user.
5. Collaborative orientation: Cooperation between business and technical teams ensures alignment between business goals and technical execution.
6. Specified Outcome: Clearly defining what outcome is desired from the project or feature. It guides the development process.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

1. Coordination between Business, Developers, and QA Engineers: Collaboration is essential for all team members to be on the same page, to better understand feature requirements.
2. Three Amigos Sessions: These sessions are held between the Business Analyst, Developer, and Tester to discuss and clarify feature requirements.
3. Expressed requirements: Clarify how each team member comprehends the functionality of the feature and how it addresses the business needs, ensuring everyone is aligned in their understanding and approach.
4. Developing Business Rules Collaboratively: Making sure that business rules are clearly defined and properly implemented in the software.
5. Ongoing Feedback: When developing features, seek continuous feedback to allow for adjustments during the process.
6. Natural Decision Making: All major decisions are made collaboratively by the team, and can be agreed upon and discussed openly. 
7. Efficient Testing: Collaboration among cross-functional teams makes the testing process more efficient, ensuring that all aspects are thoroughly tested.

User-Centric Design

1. Understanding User Needs: Enhanced insight into user behavior, their needs, and the issues they face with the product.
2. User Stories: Creating feature development from the user's perspective, in an "As a [user], I want [feature], so that [benefit]" format.
3. Feature Design: Each feature is designed based on the needs and behaviors of the user, thereby improving the user experience of the feature.
4. User Feedback: Collecting feedback from the user during and after development to make changes and additions to the feature.
5. Focus on benefits: Creating features with a view to how they can benefit the user. 
6. Updates and Compatibility: Regularly updating and upgrading features based on user needs.
7. Experimental Testing: Analyzing real-world user experience, through user flow testing.

Automated Testing:

1. Definitional Tests: In BDD, by writing feature files in a "Given-When-Then" format, it is possible to ensure that the tests meet the business requirements.
2. Accuracy through automation: As all tests are centralized, automation helps to reduce human errors. When code changes or feature updates are made, automated tests ensure that the feature is working correctly.
3. Requirements Validation: This is a key behavior of automated testing in BDD because it gives developers and business stakeholders the ability to validate requirements.
4. Time and cost reduction: Automated testing reduces frequent, repetitive tasks. It reduces development time and cost by finding and fixing code bugs early.
5. Continuous Integrity Tests: Running automated tests after each code change helps ensure the system's overall integrity.

Thus, automated testing is a key behavior in BDD that is critical to achieving project success.

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Iterative Development

1. Short cycles: It helps the team test features immediately and identify bugs or errors quickly.
2. Immediate Feedback: After each iteration, feedback on development, design, and testing results is received promptly, enabling continuous refinement and improvement.
3. Small changes: If development is done with small changes, they are easy to understand. Team members can manage them effectively.
4. Cascaded Development: Following each iteration, new features are integrated or enhancements are made to existing ones. This accelerates the overall development process of the project.
5. Reuse of features: Through iterative development, it is easy to reuse already developed components, thus saving time and effort.
6. Continuous search: After each iteration, the features are consistently evaluated to ensure they align with business needs. This will ultimately lead to the delivery of a product that provides complete business value

Clear Documentation

1. Effective Communication: In the BDD process, clear documentation helps clearly define business requirements and feature goals. It promotes effective communication among project team members.
2. Living Documentation: BDD documentation is living, meaning that along with project developments, the document is updated. It shows at a glance how the actual features work.
3. Timeliness: With thorough documentation, new team members can swiftly get up to speed and grasp the project's setup.
4. Bug Fix: Accurate documentation facilitates the prompt identification and correction of technical errors and gaps.
5. Document Terms: When creating BDD feature files, team members need to adhere to precise, well-defined guidelines to ensure mutual comprehension.
6. Progress Tracking: By systematically updating the document, the progress of the project can be easily tracked.

Managing Feature Files

a.    Clarity: Feature files should be clear so that everyone can understand them.
b.    Incidents: Include a description of all potential situations and usage.
c.    Topics: Put preparations, actions, and results in the correct order.
d.    Iteration: Update frequently and correct changes.
e.    Rules: File structure and name should be as per rules.

Continuous Feedback Loop

1. Post-Initial Feedback: During project development, collect immediate feedback on initial features and methods.
2. User benchmarks: Take direct feedback from real users to help refine requirements.
3. Modifications: Make necessary changes and modifications based on feedback.
4. Iterative reviews: Conduct iterative reviews to improve the quality of the project.
5. Collaboration: Get continuous feedback from team members and increase project productivity.

Benefits and Challenges in Adopting BDD
Benefits of BDD:

• Business requirements are explained in easy-to-understand language.
• Better communication between developers, testers, and stakeholders.
• Reducing bugs through automated testing.
• Faster delivery with shorter, repetitive cycles

Challenges of BDD:

• Needs training of team members on new methods.
• The right tools and techniques are essential.
• Difficulty managing feature files properly.
• Requires a lot of time and effort in the beginning.

Conclusion

With Behavior Driven Development, business requirements are easily translated into code, improving software quality. In brief, the use of BDD methods helps to increase the development efficiency of an app. 

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