Chapter 7. Behavior-driven Development

Behavior-driven Development (BDD) can be understood as the evolution and confluence of Test-driven Development (TDD) and acceptance testing. Both techniques were discussed in previous chapters, so you may want to look back at Chapter 1, Getting Started with Testing, and Chapter 6, Practicing Test-driven Development, before proceeding.

Behavior-driven Development introduces some new concepts, such as the use of a common vocabulary to describe the tests, and the inclusion of business participants in the software development project, such as product owners or business analysts.

We have visited Test-driven Development before, and we focused on converting low-level requirements into tests that could drive our development process. Behavior-driven Development forces us to concentrate on higher level requirements, and by using a specific vocabulary, we can express these requirements in a way that can be further analyzed or evaluated. Some people believe BDD...