Fine-Slicing Beats Estimation for Predictability

As requested by JB in the comments to my previous post, here is some data about what happens when a team choose fine-slicing over estimation. You’re about to see a CFD chart drawn by a team who used BDD to break down every requirement into scenarios before they started hacking on them. The items on […]

Using BDD Scenarios to Track Project Velocity

Before you write any code, start by brainstorming all the scenarios you’ll need to cover to make the story done. Do this collaboratively with everyone (devs, testers, UX, business people, product owner) who is interested in the story. Don’t try to make them valid Cucumber scenarios, just make a list of them on a whiteboard, […]

BDD Training

Update: This training is now available as a public course, starting October 8th in London. Would you like to learn how Behaviour-Driven Development can help your company get better at software development? I’ve helped several teams learn BDD, and I’ve started to formalise the training I’ve been doing into a set of course modules. The […]

Fixing my testing workflow

Okay I’m bored of this. I need to talk about it. I love to use Ruby, RSpec, Cucumber and Rails to do test-driven development, but my tools for running tests are just infuriatingly dumb. Here’s what I want: When a test fails, it should be kept on a list until it has been seen to […]

Targeting Multiple Platforms (JRuby etc) with a RubyGems .gemspec

Recently we had a user who runs the relish gem on JRuby, and needed jruby-openssl to be loaded. He kindly submitted this patch, which I merged in without really thinking about it too much. Then the problems started. That’s not the right way to express dependencies for different platforms using RubyGems and Bundler. I’ve done […]

Cucumber: Why Bother?

It’s perfectly possible to write automated acceptance tests without using Cucumber. You can just write them in pure Ruby. Take this test for withdrawing cash from an ATM: Scenario: Attempt withdrawal using stolen card Given I have $100 in my account But my card is invalid When I request $50 Then my card should not […]