Software Testing Unleashed - QA, DevEx & Quality Engineering

BDD: Stop Writing Specs. Start Giving Examples. - Gáspár Nagy

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Why Examples Matter: Rethinking Requirements

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"Learning by example is a human thing. And somehow, we have forgotten that with software development." - Gáspár Nagy

In this episode, I talk with Gáspár Nagy about behavior driven development. We look at why a simple example can beat a specification. You do not learn soccer from a rulebook. You learn by playing and watching plays. BDD uses the same trick to build understanding early. We discuss example mapping, writing readable scenarios, and turning them into executable specs with Cucumber, SpecFlow, and Reqnroll. Done well, this guides vertical slices, shows progress, and stops the mini waterfall at the end of a sprint.

Gáspár Nagy, the creator of SpecFlow & Reqnroll, bringing over 20 years of experience as a coach, trainer and test automation expert nowadays through his company, called Spec Solutions. He is the co-author of the books "Discovery: Explore behaviour using examples" and "Formulation: Document examples with Given/When/Then" and also leads SpecSync, aiding teams in test traceability with Azure DevOps and Jira. He is active in the open-source community through leading the Reqnroll project. Gáspár shares his insights at conferences, emphasizing his commitment to helping teams implement Behavior-Driven Development (BDD).

Highlights:

  • BDD scenarios like given-when-then are not the starting point but the documented end result of a collaborative discovery process that must include business and technical roles together.
  • Teams that skip the collaborative example-finding session and let one person write scenarios alone reproduce the same communication gap BDD is designed to close.
  • Driving implementation scenario by scenario, completing one before starting the next, produces a better final design than fleshing out the full solution upfront, because requirements shape the code directly.
  • Readable BDD scenarios give product owners a daily, self-service view of implementation progress without waiting for a sprint demo or a status update from developers.
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    Software Testing Unleashed - QA, DevEx & Quality EngineeringBy Richard Seidl | Software Development & Testing Expert