Developers have been using the term “BDD” for a while now. It is often confused with BDD, but they are two different terms used in software development. In this article, we will help you to understand what BDD stands for and its different aspects.
What is BDD?
BDD stands for Behavior Driven Development. This is a software development process that follows the steps of behavior-driven development (BDD). It provides an integrated framework for creating, documenting and testing user stories.
It is divided into four phases: Define → Specify → Implement → Verify
BDD helps in creating user stories that are executable and testable at the same time. BDD works on requirements, not features or tasks. The entire system can be written in terms of user stories.
BDD also focuses on the acceptance criteria, not on features or tasks. This helps in creating automated tests that are executable and testable at the same time. Click over here to find out an article source on software development.
Why to Choose BDD?
There are many benefits of using BDD. Some of them are listed below:
- It helps in getting better user stories by focusing on acceptance criteria instead of features or tasks.
- It focuses on the entire system, not just a single task or feature. It reduces code duplication and helps in improving overall quality.
- It helps in creating testable and executable user stories, which will improve the quality of the software.
- It reduces development time and cost as well as it improves productivity and collaboration between different teams involved in a project.
- BDD is an agile approach to software development that focuses on completing tasks, not on completing features.
- BDD is an effective approach to software development that focuses on the entire system, not just a single task or feature. This helps in reducing code duplication and improves overall quality of the software.
Characteristics of BDD
There are certain characteristics of BDD that can be used to determine whether it is appropriate for a particular project. They are listed below:
- BDD in Agile Projects: Since BDD has its roots in XP; one may wonder if the two approaches would work well together. The answer is yes, in fact, BDD can be used in Agile projects.
- Testing and Automation: While testing with TDD or nUnit, developers write test cases that make sure the code they are writing works as expected. This gives them confidence to move on to the next feature.
- Collaboration: Developers can work together using different approaches like TDD and nUnit while writing code. However, in most cases they end up spending more time arguing about which approach should be used, instead of focusing on the task at hand.
- Unit Tests: Unit tests are written before each new feature is implemented. However, unit tests do not test for the business rules or user requirements. BDD developers write tests that check the functionality of each feature before it is implemented.
- Integration Tests: Integration tests are written after all features have been completed and integrated into a system. These tests check for any issues with data migration, security, performance or stability of the entire system.
- Automation: Automation tools are used to test every new feature for performance, security and stability. This can be tedious and time consuming, so it is important that all new features are tested with automation. BDD allows developers to write tests for their features in an automated way.
Conclusion
BDD is a great tool for both developers and stakeholders. It improves the communication between them, as well as helps to make decisions about which features should be implemented next. BDD also provides guidelines on how to write code in an efficient way, resulting in high quality software. Developers can focus on writing high quality code, rather than creating tests for their features.