I went along to an Agile Testing in Finance session run by Gojoko Adzic. The session was entitled: Executable Documentation – The Remix. Always a good gig attended by intelligent folk who realised that there is much more to be done to mature the process of software development.
You can find some detail on Gojoko’s website and this post is not so much about the tools presented, but in a nutshell:
Chris Agmen-Smith talked about Pettswood, an attempt to make executable documentation accessible by business users.
Matt Wynne – Relish, an extension to the cucumber project to bring the specifications alive on a very presentable html report.
Cirilo Wortel – Xebium, Which I thought of as bringing FitNess up to date and giving it a modern UX.
So my take on all this? It seems to me that the most important thing is forming a good team around a key business user. That client team should have people from development a product owner, possibly a BA and at least one senior business user. Bring the requirements discussion, and priority right out into the open involving the business as much as possible.
Then tools like the ones discussed this week can be used to bring alive the tests in a format that the business can view and edit. Which just leaves the easy bit…. implementation. (I jest)
If you can’t form a Client team, there is little point exploring BDD or live documentation, as the important part is that conversation and interaction that the client team has over the specifications.
