Ivan Kravchenko

Current behavior-driven development (BDD) practices promise to engage more stakeholders in an agile software development process through the use of behavior specifications of the software product. However, current capabilities for behavior specification restrict possible feedback as they fail to reliably connect the specification with the corresponding implementation.

I analyze 14 BDD tools to observe their limitations for facilitating feedback between multiple stakeholders. Existing BDD tools differ in characteristics regarding their support for ubiquitous language and specification format.

Despite the recent attempts to write more natural language specifications, the existing tools are largely developer-oriented and limit the engagement of other participants. They focus mostly on asserting input values against desired business output for a BDD scenario and much less on manipulating the output itself.

In my master thesis I develop a prototype solution `Moldable scenario editor' implemented in the Pharo environment. I allow BDD scenarios to return objects and adapt their representation to the perspective of non-technical stakeholders.

The prototype's goal is to engage more participants in the agile software development process by giving them different ways to experiment with behavior specifications within an IDE.

Contact: ivan.kravchenko@students.unibe.ch

Repository: https://github.com/vaano94/SCG_EpicGit