Getting the Words Right
There has been some laudable progress in test-driven development (TDD), leading to what is now being touted as “behaviour-driven development” (note the English spelling). Two key proponents of this approach have been Dave Astels and Dan North, obviously among others, in setting up the BDD organization.
According to Dave’s first posting on this subject more than a year ago:
Maybe 10% of the people I talk to really understand what [TDD is] really about. Maybe only 5%. That sucks. What’s wrong? Well… one thing is that people think it’s about testing. That’s just not the case.
Sure, there are similarities, and you end up with a nice low level regression suite… but those are coincidental or happy side effects. So why have things come to this unhappy state of affairs? Why do so many not get it?
The thing about BDD is that it is not a new discipline or a radical change from earlier initiatives. It begins from the observation that test-driven design deals mostly with behavior and only in a small portion with unit tests. It extends the metaphor from development to engage the sponsor and (as I argue below) the market as well.
One of the things I find most compelling about the BDD approach is its emphasis on what sales people in the SPIN methodology have called “common language” and the domain-driven design people have called “ubiquitous language.” The notion is that all stakeholders in a project — including importantly the market, users and sponsors — need to have a common vocabulary that is simple, accurate, accessible, descriptive and consistent. In short, if such a language can be defined and used assiduiously, it becomes compelling and memorable. From the standpoint of development, this leads to consistency and clear communications, with the real side benefit of being more productive. From the standpoint of use and acceptance (“sales”), clear language leads to broader and quicker adoption.
Mindset matters. The language we use in our actual code, the language we use to describe our projects internally, the language we use to communicate the wonderful stuff we have created to the outside world, all of this matters. (Three cheers for dynamic languages and domain-specific languages – DSLs.) In fact, it matters so much, that if we are not taking the market’s viewpoint about what and how to explain this stuff we are likely producing crap that no one is interested in.
We all reflect the tools and the terminology that we use to work our way in the world. Development, testing (behaviorial design), and programming languages should all be in sync with our users’ end goals. What is wrong with users being able to read our code and understand what it is intending to do?
The BDD Web site does not yet offer any “cookbooks” for how such language is actually developed nor what specific steps need to be followed. (All practitioners would agree this is a hard process that requires focused attention.) But I think the protagonists are on to something very meaningful and real here.
Dave has also offered a nice PDF overview and there is also some great Ruby documentation associated with the rSpec Ruby gem.
Modular code development through agile dynamic languages, well-tested, and designed for clarity and purpose with all stakeholders is good code. I encourage the community to pay close attention and to get involved with BDD.
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