Explanation to Behavior Driven Development Definition, Benefits, & More

In this post, we will restrict ourselves to the ideas, direct benefits, and theories behind this development technique.

What is Behavior Driven Development?

BDD (Behavior-Driven Development) is a testing practice that supplies built-in quality by specifying tests before, or as part of, system behavior. It helps guide development, decrease rework, and increase flow. BDD also focuses on internal implementation to allow the system to evolve while meeting the specified behavior even if the system undergoes refactoring. A company's acceptance of automated BDD testing can be measured by whether it provides release-on-demand functions or other automation tools like test coverage reporting or self-service portal functionality.

Behavior Driven Development (BDD), originally coined by Ward Cunningham in the late 1980s, is a practice for software development that encourages a more efficient and effective product development process. By encouraging collaboration across different roles to build a shared understanding of the problem that must be solved, BDD enables systems to be built faster and more efficiently. Through rapid iterative design and testing it can be used to reduce defects and increase software quality. BDD also produces system documentation that can be automatically checked against the behavior of the system.

The Behavior-Driven Development process is essentially a structured, cyclical development process where quality acceptance tests (QATs) are written during the discovery phase, and then automated during the automation phase. Through the use of acceptance testing, functional requirements can be discovered early in the SDLC, allowing the product to be built with quality code instead of low-level features that may not be used. The BDD cycle also creates a positive feedback loop that accelerates the learning curve for teams using it because they are continually doing exploratory testing as they work through their development process. BDD is a systematic way of producing high-quality software that dependably meets business requirements. BDD is based on the principles of Extreme Programming (XP) and Test-Driven Development (TDD).

Advantages of Behavior Driven Development

We have explained through many dimensions of the trending query of “behavior driven development definition”, now let's dive into its direct advantages:

1. This technique is well known in the context of testing and describes a process used to make sure a program works. Specifically, this technique is used to help developers verify that they have implemented all of the intended functions in their code. In addition, this technique can also be used to get early feedback on aspects of an application that are not yet fully defined by the end user.

2. You can adopt BDD quickly. It’s explained using very simple language and there’s a much shorter learning curve for everyone involved. The shared language allows managers and directors to understand what you’re doing, allowing you to build trust between your team and the company. Since BDD also gives users a way to use the software, it accelerates business outcomes by encouraging more adoption at higher levels of the organization.

3. With BDD, everyone on the team can understand and write code that automates acceptance tests. It’s the developer’s code that automates the tests, but business stakeholders can understand it.

4. Now, thanks to BDD and behavior-driven development, everyone on your team can read and write acceptance tests so you can automate the entire process.

5. Where Continuous Integration and unit testing go hand in hand, Behavior Driven Development uses simple, user-centric language like examples and stories to describe how your features work.

6. A behavior-driven development (BDD) process aims to achieve the same results as TDD, but it achieves this outcome more flexibly.

7. Eliminate waste and focus on user needs with BDD. The BDD method allows you to communicate requirements so there’s less rework due to misinterpreted requirements and acceptance criteria. You can meet business objectives with each development, so products have a clear benefit for the business.

8. BDD helps you eliminate waste in your software development processes by clearly communicating requirements and acceptance criteria. You’ll focus on user needs, which will enable you to meet business objectives.

9. With BDD, each development can be traced back to the actual business objectives. When you prioritize using BDD, you can eliminate waste and focus on user needs.

10. BDD allows you to communicate requirements so there’s less rework due to misinterpreted requirements and acceptance criteria. Focus on user needs with the BDD methodology and be consistently able to identify and fix bugs earlier in the software development lifecycle.

Summing Up

The concepts we explained above include behavior driven development definition and other related concepts. This basic guide provides an introduction to behavior-driven development (BDD) for software professionals and managers. It focuses on how BDD can improve collaboration with customer representatives in your next software project, using a pragmatic, customer-centric approach.