Behavior Driven
Development in
Requirement
Engineering
This presentation will explore the power of Behavior Driven Development (BDD)
in Requirement Engineering. We will delve into its core concepts, benefits,
practical implementation, and the challenges it addresses.
by Shaheryar Saif
What is Behavior Driven
Development (BDD)?
User-centric Approach Collaborative Development
BDD focuses on defining software functionality through the lens BDD promotes collaboration among stakeholders, including
of user behavior, ensuring that the product meets user needs and developers, testers, business analysts, and product owners, by
expectations. providing a common language for understanding and
communicating requirements.
The BDD
Lifecycle
Requirements gathering involves understanding user needs,
1
business goals, and functional specifications.
Scenario definition involves breaking down user stories into
2
specific scenarios, outlining the expected behavior of the
system under different conditions.
Test automation involves writing automated tests to validate
3
the behavior of the software against the defined scenarios.
Continuous integration involves integrating new code into the
4
main codebase frequently, running automated tests to ensure
code quality and consistency.
Advantages of BDD in
Requirement Engineering
1 Clear Communication 2 Early Detection of Errors
BDD provides a clear and concise language for BDD encourages writing automated tests early in the
communicating requirements, reducing ambiguity and development process, enabling the detection of errors
promoting understanding among stakeholders. before they become major issues.
3 Improved Collaboration 4 Reduced Time to Market
BDD fosters collaboration between technical and non- BDD can help accelerate the development process by
technical teams, ensuring that everyone is aligned on the reducing the time spent on debugging and resolving
requirements and the desired behavior of the software. defects.
Key Principles of
BDD
User Focus Collaboration
BDD prioritizes the user's
and Shared
perspective, ensuring that
Understandin
software development addresses
g
their needs and expectations. BDD emphasizes the importance
of collaboration among
stakeholders to achieve a shared
understanding of requirements
and desired behavior.
Test-Driven Continuous
Development Feedback
BDD encourages writing BDD promotes a culture of
automated tests before writing continuous feedback, allowing
code, ensuring that the software teams to iterate and improve the
behaves as expected from the product based on the results of
start. automated tests.
Techniques and
Tools in BDD
Cucumber Gherkin
A popular BDD framework that allows A domain-specific language used to
users to write tests in a natural write BDD test scenarios, following a
language, making them easy to specific syntax for defining features,
understand for both technical and scenarios, and steps.
non-technical stakeholders.
RSpec JBehave
A testing framework for Ruby, widely A BDD framework for Java, enabling
used with Cucumber to implement developers to define and execute
BDD tests and automate their tests in a human-readable format.
execution.
Implementing BDD in
Requirement Engineering
Identify User Stories
1
Start by capturing user stories that describe the desired behavior of the system from the user's perspective.
Define Acceptance Criteria
2 Write acceptance criteria that clearly define the conditions under which a user story is
considered complete.
Write BDD Scenarios
3 Use a BDD framework like Cucumber or JBehave to write test scenarios in a
human-readable format, outlining the steps and expected outcomes.
Automate Tests
4 Write automated tests to validate the behavior of the software
against the defined scenarios.
Challenges and Best
Practices
1 2
Training Tool Selection
Ensure that all stakeholders are properly trained on BDD principles Choose BDD tools that are appropriate for the specific project and
and techniques. technology stack.
3 4
Collaboration Continuous Improvement
Foster a collaborative environment where stakeholders can work Continuously evaluate and improve the BDD process based on
together to define and refine requirements. feedback and lessons learned.
