Fusion of Agile-Scrum to BDD

Transcription

1 Article is about how can BDD (Behavior Driven Development) be use in SCRUM framework to make agile process more agile and effective Fusion of Agile-Scrum to BDD Transforming agile to more-agile Rajnish Chauhan

2 Agile methodologies are getting a lot of attention now a days and organizations are keen to adopt the agile for software development. Scrum is one of the most famous process for agile software development. It is assumed that readers have sufficient knowledge on Scrum agile process and terminology. In Scrum, all requirements are listed in Product Backlog in a sprint planning meeting, on top the high priority and at the bottom the ones with lower priority are listed. Team members figure out how many items they can commit to and then create a sprint backlog, which is a list of the tasks to perform during the sprint. The spring planning is as shown in figure below: High Priority Low Priority Story3 Story4 Story5 Product Backlog Sprint Backlog SPRINT PLANNING While an agile approach can be used for managing any project, Scrum is ideally suited for projects with rapidly changing or highly emergent requirements such as we find in software development. What is the RISK? When requirements are changing fast, there is risk of misinterpretation of requirements and their functional behavior and also behavior of new requirements. If there are complex business rule and complex business scenario then risk of fulfillment of requirement goes up with each such business case, adding more risk of acceptance of final product. Rajnish Chauhan Fusion Of Scrum to BDD 1

3 This could cause rework and delay in final product shipment and a long product backlog. In Scrum, after defining the Sprint backlog the development activity,which is called Sprint, starts. One sprint is usually spans from 24 hour to 30 days. In such scenario it becomes very important to have clear understanding of requirements as development duration is less and there is very little scope to recover from any rework due to misunderstanding of requirements. How to mitigate this RISK? How one can mitigate this risk and can fill the gap between team & product owner to have clear understanding of requirement/functional behavior to develop product as needed? Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) is perfect answer to this question. But wait What is this and how it can help? Let me explain.. BDD focuses on obtaining a clear understanding of desired software behavior through discussion with stakeholders. Behavior-driven developers use their native language in combination with the ubiquitous language of domain-driven design to describe the purpose and benefit of their code. This allows the developers to focus on why the code should be created, rather than the technical details, and minimizes translation between the technical language in which the code is written and the domain language spoken by the stakeholders e.g. business, users, stakeholders, project managers etc. Found this definition kind of language difficult.lets go into more details and try to understand it together.. Consider the online-store application. User wants refund in return of defective product. Requirement from client will be to return the money to the user on refunding some article say phone. Ok, this is fine but what is needed to implement in software and how client will accept it? A very obvious question from development team. This kind of confusion happens because user & developer talks in different language. Developer talks in technical way and user in their own language for a requirement causing gap in understanding. Rajnish Chauhan Fusion Of Scrum to BDD 2

4 This is my new requirement Ok got it IF ( x > 89)then sysout(.. ); How can it BDD be created so that client and development team are having same understanding. In BDD language the requirement can be described as: WHEN user has bought a phone AND phone cost $100 WHEN we refund the phone THEN user should be refunded $100 BDD provides a platform to transform requirement into functional behavior.this results in better understanding of functional behavior of application to both client and development team. Development team knows what to implement and client knows what to do in acceptance testing. This was a summary introduction of BDD. There are many other keywords available in BDD for all please google it. Rajnish Chauhan Fusion Of Scrum to BDD 3

5 Where to plug-in BDD in Scrum process and where it can used during development? And now the million $ question, where to put BDD in a scrum process? This is a very important point to utilized the full power of BDD. Stakeholders Daily Scrum meeting Sprint Review Product Backlog Sprint Backlog Sprint 1 Story3 Story4 Story5 Sprint N Sprints Shippable product The figure above shows all points where BDD can be plug-in to Scrum methodology. Lets discuss how BDD will be useful on all points At Product Backlog & Spring Backlog BDD will provide common ground & language to transform requirement into functional behavior in product backlog and to change functional behavior into technical specification to implement. Daily Scrum Meeting Many times Functional behavior are related to each other and in software development, team members work parallel on functional behavior linked to each other Development Final functional behavior In daily scrum meeting,bdd will provide common platform to understand each of development activity and will avoid any confusion and knowledge gap to produce final among development team. Rajnish Chauhan Fusion Of Scrum to BDD 4

6 Sprint Meeting At Sprint meeting, Product owner, Development team & stakeholder comes together and see a demo what the team has produced. As BDD is in place from Sprint planning and all stakeholders were involved when defining requirement, BDD documents become the valid document to discuss final product behavior in user acceptance. This provides a better visibility of what was required, why was needed & who has requested. The Benefits How this fusion will benefits. Avoids misinterpretation of user stories Transform requirement in to functional behavior of the software Provide a common platform and vocabulary to understand requirement in better way Development team is aware of User Acceptance behavior in advance for all user stories As requirements ( user stories )are inter-dependent,therefore helps in avoiding any confusion among development team Spring meetings & daily scrum meetings are more effective Rajnish Chauhan Fusion Of Scrum to BDD 5

7 REFERENCE Rajnish Chauhan Fusion Of Scrum to BDD 6