Introducing Behaviour-Driven Development

I came across behaviour-driven development (BDD) early this year at the software architecture workshop in Cortina.

When Dan North started illustrating the concept and his findings, I almost immediately felt that he was on to something with incredible potential; so much in fact, that I definitely consider that session the highlight of the entire workshop.

On the surface, BDD can be described as a simple refinement of test-driven development (TDD).

After practicing TDD for a while, it is easy to realize that test-driven development is more about code design (specification) than testing (validation).
In fact, it is about expressing the behavioural intent of the systems we are developing.

As a consequence, BDD is a practice that, at its core, advocates modifying the nomenclature of our tests to better support this mindset.

There is a lot more to it of course, but since I still have to prepare my luggage and I risk to be late for my flight to Barcelona (yep, I’m going to Tech-Ed Developers!) I won’t go into any detail today.
I will write about it very soon, however, as I’ve been trying it for a while and I think it is only fair to share my experience.

In the meantime, I strongly suggest reading the excellent article that Dan published for Better Software magazine last March and that now is finally available online.

Claudio Perrone

My passion is to develop the critical thinking skills of people and help them bring the best of their work to the world. Lean & Agile management consultant, startup strategist, award-winning speaker and entrepreneur. Creative force behind A3 Thinker and PopcornFlow.