Behavior-Driven Development

Description

Behavior-driven development is primarily a way to create shared understanding through collaboration. Rather than treating automated scenarios as the primary goal, this course emphasizes how teams use examples, conversation, and executable specifications to steer development toward building the right thing. BDD helps teams move closer to validation by clarifying business intent before implementation begins.

This class also shows how BDD builds on Agile and TDD foundations. Participants learn how product owners, developers, testers, and subject matter experts work together to shape user stories, define examples, and drive development from the outside in. Through demonstrations and hands-on activities, learners practice writing clearer stories and scenarios, understand how feature files connect to code, and explore how TDD acts as the inner loop inside a broader BDD workflow.

Key takeaways from this class include:

• Understand BDD as a collaboration and discovery technique, not just a test automation tool
• Learn the roles of business stakeholders, developers, testers, and special contributors in effective BDD sessions
• Use TDD to support outside-in development and improve the quality of BDD implementation
• Distinguish between features, user stories, acceptance criteria, and executable scenarios
• Write clearer, simpler, more business-focused scenarios and avoid overly technical or brittle specifications
• Understand how feature files, step definitions, and automation frameworks fit together
• Recognize common cultural, organizational, and technical traps that make BDD difficult to sustain
• Develop a practical approach for transitioning teams toward BDD incrementally

By the end of this course, participants will be better equipped to use BDD to improve shared understanding, reduce ambiguity, create more meaningful automated tests, and support higher-quality software delivery.

Who Should Attend

This class is intended for software developers, testers, product owners, business analysts, and other team members involved in planning, building, and validating software behavior.

Preparation

Participants should be prepared to connect to a class machine or exercise environment and run a basic build and test command as part of the workshop exercises. The course includes interactive discussions and practical scenario-writing and development activities.