Elaborate with Scenarios

Add scenarios to each feature in order to:

• Elicit additional expectations from product owners
• Uncover unknowns before work is accepted in a sprint
• Communicate to developers what needs to be implemented
• Demonstrate software meets acceptance criteria
• Provide a foundation for change orders
• Eventually, create automated tests

When to elaborate

• Important scenarios sometimes written alongside features
• Most detail is usually added after a feature is chosen for implementation
• Too much detail may bog down understanding of full scope
• Why detail something that may never be built?

What to describe

• Don’t try to test every permutation
• Cover valuable paths
• The happy paths: When the user does what you want them to

• The less happy paths: When you need to direct the user to do something else
  • A required field was left blank
  • Data was entered in an unexpected format
  • Terms of service weren’t accepted
  • A search returns no results

Who elaborates?

• Elaboration is a collaboration between:
  • Project managers
  • Product owners
  • Developers
  • Testers

• Emphasize providing:
  • Enough guidance for developers
  • Enough flexibility for implementation
  • Keep it flexible
  • Avoid implementation details
  • Don’t try to stuff it into pre-existing steps

Gherkin Scenario Format

Given: Defines the initial state of the system for the scenario

Given I am on the homepage

When: Describes the action performed on the system

When I press "Log in"

Then: Describes the system state after the action has been performed

Then I should see "Username field is required"

And, But: Can be added to any of the above

And I should see "Password field is required"

• Each line is called a Step
• Each step is supported by PHP code

The whole feature

features/login.feature

Feature: Maintain content
  In order to maintain site content
  As an editor
  I need to log in

  Scenario: Enter valid username and password // Happy path
    Given I am on the homepage
    When I fill in "admin" for "Username"
    And I fill in "admin" for "Password"
    And I press "Log in"
    Then I should see "Add content"

  Scenario: Fail to enter username or password // Less happy path
    Given I am on the homepage
    When I press "Log in"
    Then I should see "Username field is required"
    And I should see "Password field is required"

Scenario Style

• Every scenario is indendent
• Always from perspecitve of the role identified in the feature
• No more than 6 - 8 scenarios per feature
• One Given: Set the scene
• One When: Change the scene
• One Then: Observe the outcome
• Each with as many Ands or Buts as needed

Example

Once a step definition is written in PHP, the step can be re-used:

Scenario: Access free content
  Given I am on "/series/learning-sass-and-compass"
  When I follow "What is a CSS Preprocessor?"
  Then I should see "What is a CSS Preprocessor?"
  And I should see "Interactive Transcripts"