"Tools should be secondary to what you're trying to achieve with BDD and the value that it brings," says Kate Falanga, Director of QA at Huge, of some people's fascination with BDD tools. Kate's session at Agile Alliance Technical Conference 2016 was a workshop called "Behavior-Driven Development for Non-Coders" and aimed to promote "shift left" testing: starting testing earlier in the development cycle (toward the left, if you're looking at the dev workflow). Part of Kate's workshop centered around acting out a story kickoff session with "a really terrible user story that I wrote." The goal was to focus on communication and for participants to feel how it changed the user story. The story kickoff session or huddle serves to clearly identify the requirements in a user story before any development takes place and as a result the best huddle with have the developer, the tester and the Product Owner. This ensures that any low-hanging fruit (both problems and opportunities) are addressed at the development stage, rather than later when changes are much more expensive. If you're gonna invite someone else into the huddle (or "Three Amigos" as some cheekily call it), Kate says consider a visual UX or design expert. Kate Falanga (Director, Quality Assurance at Huge) has over 14 years of digital experience. At Huge she works with a full time team of quality assurance professionals as well as actively supports projects and project teams with testing mentorship. As part of her role she works alongside other leadership within the company on overall technical strategy. SolutionsIQ's Leslie Morse hosts. About Agile Amped The Agile Amped podcast series engages with industry thought leaders at Agile events across the country to bring valuable content to subscribers anytime, anywhere. To receive real-time updates, subscribe at YouTube, iTunes or SolutionsIQ.com. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/SIQYouTube, http://bit.ly/SIQiTunes, http://www.solutionsiq.com/agile-amped/ Follow: http://bit.ly/SIQTwitter Like: http://bit.ly/SIQFacebook