Thursday, October 29, 2009

SpecFlow - Pragmatic BDD for .Net

Some days ago TechTalk released SpecFlow as an open source project.

Unbenannt.png

The mission of SpecFlow is to provide a pragmatic and frictionless approach to Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) and Behavior Driven Development (BDD) for .NET projects today.

The main website is at www.specflow.org
The source code is hosted on GitHub: SpecFlow.
The wiki and issue tracking is at code.google.com/p/specflow

We at TechTalk are successfully using SpecFlow in several projects.

SpecFlow was mainly developed on the background that using Cucumber on the .Net platform is currently painful and not frictionless at all. You can read more on Gaspars Blog.

SpecFlow was heavily inspired by Cucumber. It aims at bridging the communication gap between domain experts and developers by binding business readable behavior specifications to the underlying implementation.

To get an idea how this can be realized:

First write your scenarios in plain-text...step1.png

... then let SpecFlow execute them! step7.png

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Büroeröffnung TechTalk Schweiz im Technopark Zürich - Vortrag agiles Testen mit ATDD und BDD

Update 2009-11-18: Slides are published on SlideShare

My company TechTalk is officially opening its new office in Switzerland next Wednesday October 28 in Zurich's Technopark.

Christian and I will hold a technical Talk about realizing agile Testing with Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) and Behavior Driven Development (BDD).

Milton & Red Swingline.bmp Everybody is invited, entrance is free.

The talk starts at 16:30. Here is the official announcement. I would happy to see you there.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Learned today: Scrum is like a roundabout

Yesterday I was attending the scrum breakfast in Bern.

François Bachmann held an insightful presentation where he drew analogies between traffic and software projects: Projektstau auflösen - wie Sie Ihrem Manager Agilität erklären können (Breaking up traffic jam - how you can explain Agile to your manager).

roundabout.pngThe main analogy was:
Scrum is like a roundabout
  • Simple & Transparent Concept
  • Based on the Pull principle (not Push)
  • Provides Feedback
  • Self-organising mechanism
  • Heavily relies on discipline and personal responsibility
  • Roundabouts cause uncertainty and precaution at first contact (if you are used to traffic lights - command & control style).
  • Roundabouts are optimized for local decisions (only precedence from one direction is relevant) - traffic is too complex for exact planning and influenced by unforeseeable events, only high level planning is feasible, details have to taken care of when they happen.
  • A lot of decision-makers with potential different interests are involved
  • Individual decision-makers have only incomplete informations
  • Roundabouts work as well for rush-hours as for no-traffic situations
  • Benefits: less conflict, higher safety, optimized throughput, reduced waste, reduced costs, calm & aesthetic
  • Problems: Not appropriate for some situations (highway crossing a footpath), requires space, needs getting used to

  • 531312153_9f1bef580b.jpg
    And a funny example of scrumbut:
    Arc de Triomphe - a roundabout, but entering vehicles have precedence.
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