Deliver better business outcomes with BDD in QTM4J

[#1]

Behavior-driven development (BDD) is an agile software development process that encourages collaboration among team members in a software development project. What makes BDD special within the agile testing community? BDD uses human readable narrative of the software user stories for the test cases. With BDD, tests are created using the gherkin Given-When-Then language.

given (some context)

when (something happens)

then (outcome)

Simple scenarios on how an application should behave from the standpoint of the end user is the goal here. Free and open source BDD testing frameworks like RSPEC, Cucumber, and Specflow aim to fulfil the automation requirements that many agile development organisations have. It enables teams to deliver regular, dependable releases of functional software that matches the organization’s needs while necessitating some maintenance effort and consistency.

Shift left is the trending concept that emphasizes on testing early and often. With BDD practically deriving from user stories, BDD test cases become part of the development lifecycle right from the beginning i.e., requirements phase. BDD implementation promotes Shift left testing as Behavior test scenarios are written along-side the requirement user stories.

Watch Video here to know how to implement BDD in test management.

The BDD Process

BDD activity consists of three iterative steps:

1. To begin, select a minor upcoming change to the system – a User Story – and discuss concrete examples of the new functionality to explore, discover, and agree on the details of what is expected to be done.
2. Following that, document those examples in a way that can be automated, and then check for agreement.
3. Finally, implement the behavior described by each documented example, beginning with an automated test to guide code development.

The strategy is to keep each alteration small and iterate quickly, moving back up a level whenever more information is required. You added something valuable to your system every time you automate and implement a new example, and you’re ready to respond to feedback.

BDD Tools

Some Popular BDD tools to create BDD tests are-

• SpecFlow
• Cucumber
• Gauge
• Jasmine
• Behat
• Concordion

Why Implement BDD?

There are three major factors that compel business to implement BDD testing in their software development process-

Collaboration: Involvement of all stakeholders from the start and throughout the process fosters good communication and participation.

User-centric Approach: BDD prioritises the customer’s vision. The user’s perspective on how the product should behave is BDD’s emphasis. This user centricity eliminates all “what-ifs”, resulting in a shorter development life cycle and timely delivery of products.

Business Benefits: BDD automates redundant tasks and builds structured scenarios. It authors test scenarios in Gherkin, an easy-to-understand language. Businesses can focus on client needs and deliver outcomes faster by minimizing lag time between processes.

BDD in QMetry Test Management for Jira (QTM4J)

Using the Gherkin editor in Jira stories, enterprise teams using Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) may author, save, and sync feature files directly to/from Version Control Systems (VCS) like Bitbucket, GitHub, and GitLab. The two-way synchronisation between QTM4J and VCS puts developers and testers on the same page with the latest code changes.

Features of BDD in QTM4J

• BDD editor is provided on the Jira Story issue page, where Business Analysts/Automation testers can write down acceptance criteria in the Gherkin language.
• The BDD panel is available to all issue types which are configured as a Story in QMetry Project Settings.
• Supported Version Control Systems are GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket – Cloud & Self-hosted (Server/On-premise).
• Testers can push as well as pull the BDD content to/from the repository through the BDD editor if the version control system is configured with QTM4J project.
• Project Administrator can turn off the BDD panel afterward if it is not required on a given project.

How to Write BDD Code inside a Jira User Story in QTM4J

After enabling QTM4J in a Jira user story, there will 2 sections in the BDD panel: BDD and Test/Acceptance Criteria.

1. The BDD section allows test engineers to directly author BDD code inside a Jira user story. These files can be integrated with the Source Control Repository.
2. The Test Case/Acceptance Criteria displays a list of test cases that must tested against a user story.

Organizations already practicing BDD may have feature files as part of their Source Control Repository. The Source Control Repository can be integrated with QMetry projects and the feature files can be synced between QMetry and the Source Control Repository.

QMetry supports Bitbucket, GitLab, and GitHub as version control systems too in QTM4J.

Conclusion

BDD enables your complete team (including non-technical members) to participate in the development and testing of your software. Overall, BDD is an excellent framework for creating the right product in the right way. Organizations use BDD (Behavior-driven Development) approaches to ensure that product quality is consistently maintained. BDD scenarios bring together the development and testing teams to work toward a single goal. Using the built-in Gherkin editor in QMetry requirements, teams adopting BDD may publish, save, and sync features files directly to/from Version Control Systems (VCS) including SVN, Git, and BitBucket.

The test run results are automatically captured in QMetry once the automation team has translated the specified usage cases into tests. These findings can then be analysed in QMetry, allowing developers to create and provide the functionality as planned. In the Requirements module, QMetry additionally includes a Gherkin editor, which assists the automation team in writing BDD code from the Requirement Test Scenarios.

Want to try QTM4J for your enterprise as well?

Get Started for Free