Lean Agile Acceptance Test Driven Development Better Software Through Collaboration

How to scale ATDD to large projects --

In Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD), developers work with customers and testers to create acceptance tests that thoroughly describe how software should work from the customer's viewpoint. By tightening the links between customers and agile teams, ATDD can significantly improve both software quality and developer productivity. This is the firststart-to-finish, real-world guide to ATDD for every agile project participant. Leading agile consultant Kenneth Houston Pugh begins with a dialogue among a developer, tester, and customer, explaining the "what, why, where, when, and how" of.

Within the framework of Acceptance Test-Driven-Development (ATDD), customers, developers, and testers collaborate to create acceptance tests that thoroughly describe how software should work from the customer’s viewpoint. By tightening the links between customers and agile teams, ATDD can significantly improve both software quality and developer productivity. This is the first start-to-finish, real-world guide to ATDD for every agile project participant. Leading agile consultant Ken Pugh begins with a dialogue among a customer, developer, and tester, explaining the “what, why, where, when, and how” of ATDD and illuminating the experience of participating in it. Next, Pugh presents a practical, complete reference to each facet of ATDD, from creating simple tests to evaluating their results. He concludes with five diverse case studies, each identifying a realistic set of problems and challenges with proven solutions. Coverage includes • How to develop software with fully testable requirements • How to simplify and componentize tests and use them to identify missing logic • How to test user interfaces, service implementations, and other tricky elements of a software system • How to identify requirements that are best handled outside software • How to present test results, evaluate them, and use them to assess a project’s overall progress • How to build acceptance tests that are mutually beneficial for development organizations and customers • How to scale ATDD to large projects

Scale collaboration, not process. If you’re trying to use agile and lean at the program level, you’ve heard of several approaches, all about scaling processes. If you duplicate what one team does for several teams, you get bloat, not delivery. Instead of scaling the process, scale everyone's collaboration. With autonomy, collaboration, and exploration, teams and program level people can decide how to apply agile and lean to their work. Learn to collaborate around deliverables, not meetings. Learn which measurements to use and how to use those measures to help people deliver more of what you want (value) and less of what you don’t want (work in progress). Create an environment of servant leadership and small-world networks. Learn to enable autonomy, collaboration, and exploration across the organization and deliver your product. Scale collaboration with agile and lean program management and deliver your product.

More and more Agile projects are seeking architectural roots as they struggle with complexity and scale - and they're seeking lightweight ways to do it Still seeking? In this book the authors help you to find your own path Taking cues from Lean development, they can help steer your project toward practices with longstanding track records Up-front architecture? Sure. You can deliver an architecture as code that compiles and that concretely guides development without bogging it down in a mass of documents and guesses about the implementation Documentation? Even a whiteboard diagram, or a CRC card, is documentation: the goal isn't to avoid documentation, but to document just the right things in just the right amount Process? This all works within the frameworks of Scrum, XP, and other Agile approaches

WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT? Communicate Business Needs in an Agile (e.g. Scrum) or Lean (e.g. Kanban) Environment Problem solvers are in demand in every organization, large and small, from a Mom and Pop shop to the federal government. Increase your confidence and your value to organizations by improving your ability to analyze, extract, express, and discuss business needs in formats supported by Agile, Lean, and DevOps. The single largest challenge facing organizations around the world is how to leverage their Information Technology to gain competitive advantage. This is not about how to program the devices; it is figuring out what the devices should do. The skills needed to identify and define the best IT solutions are invaluable for every role in the organization. These skills can propel you from the mail room to the boardroom by making your organization more effective and more profitable. Whether you: - are tasked with defining business needs for a product or existing software, - need to prove that a digital solution works, - want to expand your User Story and requirements discovery toolkit, or - are interested in becoming a Business Analyst, this book presents invaluable ideas that you can steal. The future looks bright for those who embrace Lean concepts and are prepared to engage with the business community to ensure the success of Agile initiatives. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN Learn Step by Step When and How to Define Lean / Agile Requirements Agile, Lean, DevOps, and Continuous Delivery do not change the need for good business analysis. In this book, you will learn how the new software development philosophies influence the discovery, expression, and analysis of business needs. We will cover User Stories, Features, and Quality Requirements (a.k.a. Non-functional Requirements – NFR). User Story Splitting and Feature Drill-down transform business needs into technology solutions. Acceptance Tests (Scenarios, Scenario Outlines, and Examples) have become a critical part of many Lean development approaches. To support this new testing paradigm, you will also learn how to identify and optimize Scenarios, Scenario Outlines, and Examples in GIVEN-WHEN-THEN format (Gherkin) that are the bases for Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) and Behavior Driven Development (BDD). This book presents concrete approaches that take you from day one of a change initiative to the ongoing acceptance testing in a continuous delivery environment. The authors introduce novel and innovative ideas that augment tried-and-true techniques for: - discovering and capturing what your stakeholders need, - writing and refining the needs as the work progresses, and - developing scenarios to verify that the software does what it should. Approaches that proved their value in conventional settings have been redefined to ferret out and eliminate waste (a pillar of the Lean philosophy). Those approaches are fine-tuned and perfected to support the Lean and Agile movement that defines current software development. In addition, the book is chock-full of examples and exercises that allow you to confirm your understanding of the presented ideas. WHO WILL BENEFIT FROM READING THIS BOOK? How organizations develop and deliver working software has changed significantly in recent years. Because the change was greatest in the developer community, many books and courses justifiably target that group. There is, however, an overlooked group of people essential to the development of software-as-an-asset that have been neglected. Many distinct roles or job titles in the business community perform business needs analysis for digital solutions. They include: - Product Owners - Business Analysts - Requirements Engineers - Test Developers - Business- and Customer-side Team Members - Agile Team Members - Subject Matter Experts (SME) - Project Leaders and Managers - Systems Analysts and Designers - AND “anyone wearing the business analysis hat”, meaning anyone responsible for defining a future IT solution TOM AND ANGELA’S (the authors) STORY Like all good IT stories, theirs started on a project many years ago. Tom was the super techie, Angela the super SME. They fought their way through the 3-year development of a new policy maintenance system for an insurance company. They vehemently disagreed on many aspects, but in the process discovered a fundamental truth about IT projects. The business community (Angela) should decide on the business needs while the technical team’s (Tom)’s job was to make the technology deliver what the business needed. Talk about a revolutionary idea! All that was left was learning how to communicate with each other without bloodshed to make the project a resounding success. Mission accomplished. They decided this epiphany was so important that the world needed to know about it. As a result, they made it their mission (and their passion) to share this ground-breaking concept with the rest of the world. To achieve that lofty goal, they married and began the mission that still defines their life. After over 30 years of living and working together 24x7x365, they are still wildly enthusiastic about helping the victims of technology learn how to ask for and get the IT solutions they need to do their jobs better. More importantly, they are more enthusiastically in love with each other than ever before!

This is the eBook version of the printed book. This digtial Short Cut provides a concise and supremely useful guide to the emerging trend of User Acceptance Testing (UAT). The ultimate goal of UAT is to validate that a system of products is of sufficient quality to be accepted by the users and, ultimately, the sponsors. This Short Cut is unique in that it views UAT through the concept that the user should be represented in every step of the software delivery lifecycle--including requirements, designs, testing, and maintenance--so that the user community is prepared, and even eager, to accept the software once it is completed. Rob Cimperman offers an informal explanation of testing, software development, and project management to equip business testers with both theory and practical examples, without the overwhelming details often associated with books written for "professional" testers. Rather than simply explaining what to do, this resource is the only one that explains why and how to do it by addressing this market segment in simple, actionable language. Throughout the author’s considerable experience coordinating UAT and guiding business testers, he has learned precisely what testers do and do not intuitively understand about the software development process. UAT Defined informs the reader about the unfamiliar political landscape they will encounter. Giving the UAT team the tools they need to comprehend the process on their own saves the IT staff from having to explain test management from the beginning. The result is a practice that increases productivity and eliminates the costs associated with unnecessary mistakes, tedious rework, and avoidable delays. Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Defining UAT–What It Is...and What It Is Not Chapter 3 Test Planning–Setting the Stage for UAT Success Chapter 4 Building the Team–Transforming Users into Testers Chapter 5 Executing UAT–Tracking and Reporting Chapter 6 Mitigating Risk–Your Primary Responsibility