Here are the slides that I used for my talk on "Balancing the pendulum: Reflecting on BDD in Practice" at the Great Lakes Ruby Bash, April 17th, 2010 in Lansing, MI. This talk was aimed at sharing my reflections and experiences on how BDD and outside-in development has been working over the past few years.

1. Balancing the Pendulum
Reflecting on BDD in practice
Zach Dennis, Mutually Human Software
Great Lakes Ruby Bash 2010

2. BDD
Implementing an application
by describing its behaviour
from the stakeholders
perspective

3. 3 Principles
1. Enough is enough
2. Deliver stakeholder value
3. It’s all behaviour

4. Trust holds it together
The glue that

5. 7 areas
of reflection

6. Outside-in
UI/UX
Stakeholder
Stories & Acceptance Criteria
Automation
Doing it example first
Spikes

7. Pre Outside-in

8. “A man without a purpose
is like a ship without a
rudder.”
-- THOMAS CARLYLE

10. It’s easy to write code you
don’t need

11. It’s easy to invent code
you think you’ll need

12. It’s easy to write code that
is awkward to use

13. Outside-in acts as the
rudder, steering the boat.

14. Outside-in

16. Outside-in
STAKEHOLDER PERSPECTIVE
STORIES
ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA
UI/UX
VIEWS
CONTROLLERS
MODELS
DATABASE
FEATURES

17. Outside-in
is value/need driven from
the stakeholder perspective

18. Outside-in
provides a starting point

19. Outside-in
identifies where to go next

20. Outside-in
helps define done-ness

21. UI/UX

22. UI/UX
The invisible elephant
(except to designers)

23. Developers are not designers.

24. Different hats entirely.

25. Switch if necessary,
but don’t develop + design.

26. Usability matters

27. Tracking expenses
A real world example

31. Agile + UX: Convergence
John Hwang has a great talk

32. Stakeholders

33. Expect to fight
for stakeholder involvement

34. Most stakeholders
don’t care about BDD

35. 52% of agile projects
report challenges getting
stakeholder involvement
SOURCE: SCOTT AMBLER, BUSTING THE MYTHS OF AGILE DEV.
SOURCE: DR DOBBS NOVEMBER STATE OF THE UNION SURVEY

36. 15% of agile projects
report resistance from
stakeholders
SOURCE: SCOTT AMBLER, BUSTING THE MYTHS OF AGILE DEV.
SOURCE: DR DOBBS NOVEMBER STATE OF THE UNION SURVEY

37. 32% of agile projects
report challenges getting
trust
SOURCE: SCOTT AMBLER, BUSTING THE MYTHS OF AGILE DEV.
SOURCE: DR DOBBS NOVEMBER STATE OF THE UNION SURVEY

38. Stories & Acceptance Criteria

39. 9 out of 10 stakeholders
don’t author stories or
acceptance criteria

40. Stakeholders
prefer other communication
methods

41. Stories & acceptance criteria
are natural to developers
not stakeholders

42. Having 2 folks
helps to converse and record

43. Popping the “why” stack

44. SPOILER ALERT

45. Not every answer is a
going to be a good one

46. Automation

47. Not everything
has to be automated

48. Unit-level examples
YES

49. Deployments
YES

50. Acceptance-level examples
MAYBE

51. Automation isn’t free.
time, money
value, risk
commitment, requirement

52. Goals
fail fast, feedback
reflect, adapt
improve, balance
(iterate)

53. Unit-level examples
Automate
Automate
Automate

54. High level scenarios
Automate
Explore
Script

55. Computers do it
“... faster, better, stronger.”

56. They also don’t notice
anything you don’t tell
them to notice.

57. In-browser automation
is still evolving

58. Doing it example first
(er... TDD)

59. Example first
drives out design,
less code,
better code,
regression

60. Doing it well
takes experience,
exploration,
reflection,
courage,
willingness to change

61. People
have varying levels of
experience

62. Inexperience
bad examples
brittle examples
hard to maintain

63. Outside-in
is a way of thinking
before it is a hard-fast rule

64. Higher level examples
provide implementation
flexibility

65. When in doubt spike
not test

66. Spikes

67. A 15 minute spike can
save you 15% or more on
your next feature

68. Spikes aren’t BDD per-say
just simple awesome

69. Spikes
aren’t this
complex

70. A spike is
time-boxed,
communicated,
example / test free,
exploratory

71. A spike
saves time,
save money,
provide learning,
provides experience

72. Recap

73. Outside-in
UI/UX
Stakeholder
Stories & Acceptance Criteria
Automation
Doing it example first
Spikes

74. Thank you