Behavior-driven development is the collaborative process between software developers and business stakeholders to create solutions based on how people will use the software and the business value the software will provide. It includes the analysis of business requirements, the development of user stories, and the use of scenarios to define acceptance criteria for new features. This approach can help prevent issues such as scope creep and ensure that everyone involved understands the goals of the project.

When used correctly, behavior-driven development can help create software that is more user-friendly and efficient. It can also help reduce the risk of errors, improve communication between team members, and increase customer satisfaction.

Let's learn more about BDD, its benefits and potential drawbacks, and how you can get started.

How does behavior-driven development work?

BDD, or behavior driven development, focuses on defining the behavior of an application before the software development process. This helps to ensure that the final product meets the needs of the customer or client. BDD also encourages developers to collaborate with stakeholders and customers to get a better understanding of their requirements.

Doing this helps to reduce misunderstandings and can result in a higher-quality product. In addition, Behavior-driven development can help to improve communication between different teams involved in the software development process - most notably the development team and the product team if they are separate teams. Overall, behavior driven development is a flexible and powerful methodology that can help to improve the quality of your software products.

What are the benefits of BDD?

There are many benefits to using behavior-driven development. Some of these benefits include:

• behavior-driven development can help to improve communication between different teams involved in the software development process
• behavior-driven development can help to ensure that the final product meets the needs of the customer or client
• behavior-driven development helps to encourage developers to collaborate with stakeholders and customers to get a better understanding of their requirements. Doing this can help to reduce misunderstandings and can result in a higher-quality product
• In addition, behavior-driven development can help to improve communication between different team members
• Overall, behavior-driven development is a flexible and powerful methodology that can help create software products

What tools and frameworks help with BDD projects?

Technically, behavior-driven development is not a specific tool framework. BDD is a development approach. However, there are many tools that help apply the behaviour-driven development approach to a project.

There are a number of software development tools and frameworks available for Behaviour-Driven Development projects:

• Cucumber is one of the most popular, providing support for Ruby, JavaScript, Java, and other languages
• Mocha is a JavaScript testing framework that can be used for BDD or TDD projects
• Jasmine is another JavaScript testing framework that is often used for BDD development
• RSpec is another popular tool, providing a domain-specific language for writing tests
• SpecFlow is a tool that allows developers to write executable specifications in plain English, making it easier for non-technical stakeholders to understand the project requirements

These are just some of the most popular tools and frameworks available; there are many others that can be used depending on the needs of the project.

There are also a number of agile information-gathering approaches available for development projects that use behavior-driven development.

One popular approach is user stories. User stories help to define the functionality of a system from the perspective of the user. They can be written using a simple template: "As a [type of user], I want [some functionality], so that [I can achieve some goal]."

Another popular approach is gherkin. Gherkin is an approach that helps to write user stories in a more structured format. It uses simple language that is easy to read and understand. The template often looks like this: "Given [situation], when [a trigger occurs], then [this specific action will occur]."

Agile teams often use BDD as a way to improve communication and collaboration between team members. SAFe is an example of a framework that can be used for agile BDD development projects. It provides guidance on how to structure and run agile projects.

What's the difference between BDD and TDD?

BDD and TDD (test driven development) are two popular development frameworks that help to ensure high-quality code. BDD focuses on the business value of the code, while TDD (test driven development) focuses on the technical aspects.

BDD is a more recent framework, and it has been gaining popularity due to its focus on business value. However, TDD is still widely used, and it has a strong following among developers who appreciate its focus on technical quality.

While behavior driven development and test driven development have different strengths, they both can be used to produce high-quality code. As a result, development teams should choose the framework that best fits their needs.

How can you get started with BDD in your own project?

Behavior Driven Development (BDD) is a methodology that emerged from the world of Test Driven Development (TDD). BDD focuses on the behavior of an application rather than the technical details. As a result, it can be used to drive development at any level, from individual feature development to the entire product strategy.

To get started with BDD, you will need to first familiarize yourself with the concept and then choose the right tool or framework for your project or team environment. As you've seen in this article, there are many different options available. So it is important to select one that is compatible with your existing agile process and that will support the collaboration of your team. If you don't currently use an agile process, I recommend looking at SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework). I'll link it for you below. It's a great place to understand agile, start simple, and get more complex only when you need to.

SAFe 5.0 Framework

Learn about the seven core competencies that make up the SAFE 5.0 Framework.

Scaled Agile FrameworkRichard Knaster

Once you have chosen a tool or framework, you can begin integrating BDD into your development process. By addressing behavior early in the development cycle, you can improve communication and deliver more business value.

What role does the business play in BDD?

The business plays a crucial role in behavior driven development because business plans play an important role in behavior-driven development. They help define the value that BDD brings to an organization and set the framework for BDD activities. BDD can be used to improve existing processes or develop new ones. The business plan outlines the goals, objectives, and strategies for BDD implementation. It also identifies the resources required and provides a timeline for BDD activities. The business plan is a Living Document that should be reviewed and updated on a regular basis.

The BDD framework includes discovery, formulation, and automation phases:

1. BDD discovery is about understanding user needs and requirements
2. BDD formulation creates testable specifications from the user requirements
3. BDD automation automates the testable specifications

Business plans play an important role in a behavior driven development approach by providing a foundation for behavior-driven development. BDD leverages the value of tests as a Specifications by Example (SBE) methodology to drive development from the outside in.

The BDD process aids in deriving value from tests by using them as living documentation that expresses stakeholder expectations. In this way, business plans provide guidance for how BDD should be used to deliver business value. Thanks to the business plan, we can have executable requirements that document the expected behavior of our software applications. These requirements are always up-to-date because they are automatically tested against the code as it evolves.

This means that business stakeholders can have confidence that the software will behave as expected, and that developers can be confident that they are always building the right thing using a behavior-driven development process. Using a business plan in BDD gives us a clear guide for how to derive value from tests and increase our confidence in delivering software that meets stakeholder expectations.

What are the drawbacks of using BDD?

While Behavior Driven Development (BDD) can offer many benefits, there are also some potential drawbacks that should be considered.

Difficult to define clear behaviors

One challenge with BDD is that it can be difficult to define clear behaviors for all aspects of a project. This can lead to ambiguity and confusion, especially when different team members have different interpretations of the behavior requirements.

It is therefore important to agree on requirements-gathering approaches like gherkin or another approach. It is also important to ensure that requirements are provided and approved by the actual business stakeholders who know the business well and understand the true business value that the software will provide.

Potentially more up-front planning

Additionally, BDD can require a significant amount of upfront planning and documentation, which can add complexity and delay to a project.

Again, complexity can be reduced by ensuring the right business stakeholders are involved in the project and have committed the necessary time for successful business value identification and delivery.

Specialized knowledge

BDD tools and frameworks can be complex and require specialized knowledge, which can make them difficult to use for smaller projects. A behavior driven development process takes a good business plan but it also takes the right tools and knowledge of how to use them correctly.

Complexity can also be reduced by having the development team prototype specific potential BDD tools prior to the project to choose the right tools for the project and for the organization.

While BDD offers many potential benefits, these challenges should be considered before deciding if BDD is the right approach for a particular project.

What does an example BDD project look like?

Here is an example of what a BDD project might look like. This project uses the JBehave tool to run BDD tests written in Gherkin.

The first step is to write user scenarios in Gherkin. Scenarios are written in a natural language syntax and describe the behavior of the system under test. In this example, we have a scenario that describes a user login in a gherkin format:

Scenario: User login

Given: I am on the login page

When: I enter my username and password

Then: I should be logged in successfully

Next, we need to write classes that will implement the steps defined in the scenario. This is done using Java code.

Once the classes are created, JBehave can be used to map and configure specific given/when/then story behavior to test cases created against those classes. The JBehave framework helps bring BDD, given/when/then, and java programming together by providing @Given, @When, and @Then function decorators directly in the java code. This is a great way to write your test cases in the code but also map those test cases directly to a user scenario and the given/when/then mentality.

Here's an example of what that looks like in the code:

With this in place, the code can be tested and compiled and the tests continuously updated and run as business needs change.

This example is pretty specific but shows how a BDD tool can incorporate the BDD approach into the actual programming languages used in writing software. There are a lot of assumptions being made that are worth quickly mentioning:

• initial acceptance criteria will also be more thoroughly fleshed out
• business language needs to be consistent across all user stories
• non technical teams have also been trained in gherkin format
• an overall agile methodology is assumed to be in place
• everyone agrees that BDD is valuable for everyone- not just software engineering!

Wrap-up: delivering better value with BDD

BDD helps to ensure that the final product meets the needs of the business. It also encourages developers to collaborate with stakeholders and customers to get a better understanding of their requirements. It can improve communication between different teams and can improve the quality of software.

It has some potential drawbacks as noted above. But given its benefits, BDD is worth exploring as a software engineer looking to boost your career.