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Executable User Stories with RSpec and BDD

Tue, 2008-01-22 14:56 — Aslak Hellesøy
keywords:
room: Sheraton Hall B, LC — time: Wednesday 16:00-17:30
Average Rating: -

Story: Understand how BDD User Stories can be executable functional tests

As a developer
I want to just execute a prose User Story as is
So that the little diabolic details don't get lost in translation to code

Scenario: Aslak inspires someone to try this out
    Given Paul attends Aslak's session
    And he has suffered the pain of deciphering requirements
    When the demonstration is over
    Then Paul should feel motivated to try this technique

Scenario: Aslak fails to convince anyone
    Given Patty attends Aslak's session
    And she has never suffered the pain of deciphering requirements
    When the demonstration is over
    Then Patty should feel like she should have attended a different session

The text above is executable!

This demonstration will introduce you to the core principles and practices beind Behaviour Driven Development (BDD). You’ll see how the RSpec Story Runner (a BDD tool in Ruby) can be used to execute stories on the above format against a real system. It’s similar to FIT, but the format is prose instead of tables.

Process/Mechanics

3 parts, each will be about 30 minutes.

  1. Give a 1 minute teaser-demo of the Story runner to whet appetite. Introduce BDD and its benefits and goals.
  2. Group exercise where everybody gets to write some stories on the BDD format - on paper
  3. With help from the audience I’ll show the steps of making the stories executable on my laptop/projector

Thoughts and tools used:

This will blow your socks off!

P.S. Je peux aussi donner cette présentation en Français - sous les chansons françaises. Plusieurs personnes m’ont demandés comment on peut supporter d’autres langues dans cet outil, et j’aimerais en discuter avec des francophones.