Behavior-Driven Development
- From requirements engineering to test automation
Available as in-house training
Date and location of the in-house training to be agreed
Price: 690 EUR + VAT / person
Duration and language:
Onsite training - 14h - 2 days each 7 hours (including breaks).
Online training - 15h - 3 days each 5 hours (including breaks).
Online training schedule:
- 09:00 - 11:00 CET online session,
- 11:00 - 12:00 CET break,
- 12:00 - 14:00 CET online session.
Training is provided in English. A Polish version is also available.
Target group:
The training is intended for:
- business analysts and Product Owners,
- testers,
- programmers,
- project and development teams,
- IT system architects,
- organization management board, stakeholders and domain experts.
Training preconditions:
Knowledge of basic concepts in the design and implementation of information systems. Experience in working on complex IT solutions covering a number of business domains and requiring the cooperation of a large group of specialists divided into one or more teams is recommended.
For online training, it is required to meet technical requirements: https://valkir.pl/en/online-training/.
Price includes:
- Preparation and training performed by software development processes expert.
- Effective training in a small group - on average 6-12 people.
- Training materials, requisites and a certificate of training completion issued by Valkir Academy.
- Lunch and catering (drinks and snacks). Not applicable to online training.
- Trainer’s travel and expenses (T&E). Not applicable to online training.
Certification:
The price of the authorial training includes certificates of training completion issued by Valkir Academy (in English). There is no market-recognized accredited certification path.
Available dates:
| Date | Location | Price per person | |
|---|---|---|---|
| To be agreed | To be agreed | 690 EUR | Request quote |
Training description:
What is the Behavior-Driven Development training?
The Behavior-Driven Development training is intended for stakeholders and development teams implementing complex projects and creating products/services in the IT industry. Participants will experience the full cycle of delivering new functionality in an IT system. The roles of a business analyst, tester and programmer in a modern, Agile development process will be defined.
How can we be sure that the delivered functionality meets the needs of stakeholders?
This is a key question that development teams grapple with. Errors are common both at the stage of collecting requirements and ensuring the quality of the delivered solution. At the same time, they are the most common reason for the failure of IT projects.
BDD solves this problem by providing tools to minimize the risk of misunderstandings occurring in all phases of software development. It builds a bridge between requirements, implementation, tests and documentation. Taking full advantage of the training benefits requires the presence of people playing important roles in the above-mentioned processes.
Who’s behind this?
The slogan “Behavior-Driven Development” appeared for the first time at IT conferences in 2003
by Daniel Terhorst-North. The concept in its mature form saw the light of day in 2006, when Better Software magazine published an article by him entitled “Introducing BDD”. In the meantime, North initiated work on the first BDD framework called jBehave.
Dan North has observed how widespread the misconception of Test-Driven Development has become in the IT world. It was a motivation for him to reformulate it. North decided to return to the original intention behind the principles developed by Kent Beck. The innovative perspective quickly gained popularity and a wide community of software engineers, testers and business analysts developed around BDD, also developing twin concepts under the names “Acceptance Test-Driven Development”, “Acceptance Test-Driven Planning”, “Story Test-Driven Development” or “Specification by Example”.
Training agenda:
- Introduction to the Behavior-Driven Development
- Presentation of the Behavior-Driven Development basic premises.
- Benefits of using BDD at all stages of delivering new functionality.
- Discussion of misunderstandings surrounding the BDD term.
- Summary of other training topics.
- From business goals to functional requirements
- How to discover business goals while collecting requirements?
- Overview of Feature Injection and Impact Mapping techniques.
- Introduction to the rules of Real Options and Deliberate Discovery.
- Exercise: Going from business goals to functional requirements in practice.
- Specification by example
- Discussion of the advantages of specification by example.
- How to choose examples? Presentation of the Example Mapping technique.
- How to write useful User Stories?
- Use of Personas in user stories.
- Exercise: Applying the tools learned to improve user stories.
- BDD in the software development cycle
- The software development cycle using the BDD approach.
- Three Amigos sessions - how to structure a conversation about functional requirements.
- BDD in the Scrum framework, the Kanban method, in distributed teams, in fix-scoped projects and regulated industries.
- Workshop: Carrying out a full cycle of delivering new functionality.
- Gherkin language
- Overview of the feature file structure.
- Description of Given-When-Then syntax.
- Tables, examples, context and other aspects of the Gherkin language.
- Patterns, anti-patterns and how to write “gherkins”.
- Workshop: Requirements specification in Gherkin.
- Scenario automation
- An introduction to the available scenario automation tools in Gherkin.
- Introduction to using the SpecFlow framework.
- Hooks, bindings, argument transformations and other SpecFlow features.
- Presentation of methods of reporting the execution of tests.
- Patterns and anti-patterns of implementing automated tests using SpecFlow.
- Workshop: Using SpecFlow to automate scenarios written in Gherkin.
- Testing strategy, monoliths and microservices
- Demonstration of differences and similarities between BDD and TDD approaches.
- Overview of the automated tests types and explanation what acceptance tests are.
- The synergy of clean code and testability. How to build a testing pyramid?
- End-to-end tests versus contract tests, or how to adapt the BDD approach to microservice architecture.
- Indication of the BDD role in the Continuous Integration cycle.
- Exercise: Developing a testing pyramid for a new functionality.
- Test automation tools
- Implementation of unit tests using the xUnit library.
- Mock for commands, Stub for queries and how to deal with external dependencies.
- Fundamentals of UI test automation in Selenium and Cypress tools.
- Discussion of techniques and tools useful during the implementation of unit tests.
- Workshop: Implementation of automated tests with the use of known tools.
- Living documentation
- A brief overview of problems related to the creation and maintenance of documentation.
- Introduction to the concept of Living Documentation. Creating documentation using the SpecFlow report generator.
- Building transparency of work progress in the software delivery cycle.
- SpecFlow integration with Microsoft Azure using the SpecSync tool.
- Training summary
How our training look like?
Training goals:
What are the challenges we address?- How can I explain to others exactly what Behavior-Driven Development is and is not?
- How can I be sure that I have understood the customer’s business requirements correctly?
- How can I increase the stability of the IT system?
- How can I ensure that documentation is understandable and always up-to-date?
- How can I increase the transparency of the work progress?
What benefits do you get?
Training allows you to minimize the risk of catastrophic misunderstandings that commonly occur when collecting business requirements and to improve the quality of the delivered solution. The BDD approach facilitates the delivery of new functionalities, ensuring stability and maintaining documentation in both new and mature IT products/services. It covers issues in the field of communication, business analysis, programming and quality assurance.
As a result of this training, participants from different areas of the organization will:
- know and understood the aspects necessary for the effective collection of business requirements and transforming them into automated acceptance tests,
- acquire skills necessary to apply mentioned methods in practice,
- understand how and why new methods can positively affect their work.
