In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey names "Begin with the End in Mind" as the second of the seven habits. This habit applies not just to individuals, but to software development teams as well. In Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD), the Product Owner begins requirements discussions with expectations and examples, and the whole team collaborates to distill these into acceptance tests that define the essence of “Done." Modern testing frameworks enable the team to express the tests in natural language while connecting them to the software so that the tests are automated while the software is being developed. The end result is that the acceptance tests become executable requirements.
These slides explain the ATDD cycle and how it fits with other Agile development and testing practices including TDD, Continuous Integration, and Exploratory Testing.
Introduction to Acceptance Test Driven Development
1. Beginning with the End
in Mind: Driving
Development with
Acceptance Tests
Elisabeth Hendrickson
Quality Tree Software, Inc.
www.qualitytree.com
esh@qualitytree.com
Last updated November 10, 2009
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