Chapter 9. Refactoring features into abilities and business needs

This is the second chapter in a four-chapter series about managing large specification suites. Chapter 8 focused on organizing scenarios into specifications, discussing the optimal length of an average executable specification and the theoretical aspects of deciding to put a scenario into one specification or another. In this chapter, we’ll put the theory into practice by refactoring larger executable specifications into smaller ones that will be easier to manage.

We’ll continue to work with Activitee, an online platform for Fortune 500 companies that want to improve employee engagement. Chapter 8 introduced two new types of executable specifications: abilities and business needs. They replaced the Feature keyword because they’re easier to organize. But it’s one thing to know a theory and another to apply it in practice. In this chapter, we’ll deal with two core aspects of the Activitee experience—events and application security—in order to determine which is an ability and which is a business need.

9.1. Analyzing user stories: a practical example

9.2. Refactoring features into abilities

9.3. Recognizing and refactoring business needs

9.4. Summary