From Pipes to Productivity: Simplifying Gherkin Tables for BDD in Jira

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If you’ve ever used Gherkin for Behaviour-driven Development (BDD), you know how effective it can be for describing system behaviour in a shared, human-readable format. One of the more powerful and practical features in Gherkin is the data table — a structured way to bring clarity and flexibility to your Given–When–Then scenarios. It transforms plain steps into data-driven examples that express richer logic without repetition. However, working with them can be surprisingly tricky — particularly for non-technical team members.

A Simple, Realistic Example

Let’s consider a straightforward example — a tax calculator for a retail checkout system that behaves differently based on the buyer’s region and product category:

This is a perfect case for using data tables, since both tax rules and products are structured — and expressing this behavior in plain steps would be repetitive and harder to follow.

The Problem: Pipe Syntax Frustration

Traditionally, writing data tables in Gherkin requires aligning pipe (|) characters manually in plain-text format — a task that can quickly become error-prone, especially as the table grows in size or complexity.

For developers and other technical team members, this usually isn’t a big deal. They’re equipped with powerful tools like IDEs and plugins that support Gherkin syntax highlighting, auto-formatting, and linting. These environments make it relatively easy to manage even complex feature files.

But for non-technical stakeholders — business analysts, product managers, manual testers — those tools often aren’t part of their workflow. They either have to manually edit raw text, where pipe alignment becomes tedious and error-prone, or use rich-text editors and spreadsheets that support proper tables but produce content that isn't suitable for adding to source code versioning systems or to be used in automated testing.

As a result, many teams either avoid using data tables altogether or rely heavily on developers to maintain them — which undermines the whole idea of BDD being a shared, collaborative practice.

The Solution: Excel-Like Editing with Jira Apps

Tools like BDD for Jira and BDD Gherkin Editor for Jira by SharedSpec solve this problem by making Gherkin feature files — especially data tables — easier to work with inside Jira.

These apps allow you to edit data tables visually, just like in Excel. Instead of manually typing and aligning pipes, you simply click into a cell and type — rows and columns stay structured, readable, and correctly formatted. This makes writing and maintaining even complex scenarios accessible to everyone on the team, not just developers.

These apps offer capabilities that make editing data tables intuitive:

• Insert tables with one click Just use a toolbar button to add a new empty data table.
  
  

• Clean visual layout, plain text under the hood What you see is a grid with borders, but it’s stored as standard Gherkin with pipes — fully compatible with version control and test automation tools.
  
  
  
• Smart table editing controls When your cursor is in a table, an inline toolbar pops up to let you easily add/remove/move rows and columns.
  
  

In Summary

Gherkin data tables are an indispensable way to describe complex behaviour, but formatting them with raw pipe syntax can get in the way — especially for non-developers. If you're collaborating inside Jira, take advantage of tools that make tables as easy to edit as an Excel sheet — while still producing plain-text Gherkin behind the scenes. This makes behaviour-driven development more accessible to your whole team.

This article was written by the makers of BDD for Jira and BDD Gherkin Editor for Jira — two apps that make working with Gherkin scenarios and data tables easy and collaborative. You can find them on the Atlassian Marketplace.