Collaborative conversations bring business, development, and testing participants together before implementation. They clarify the business problem, desired outcomes, assumptions, and expected behavior through concrete examples and counterexamples, reducing misunderstandings and information lost in translation. section 1.1 section 2.5.1
A productive conversation typically moves through these activities:
- Identify the business goal and the outcome the feature should support. section 1.1
- Explore concrete examples and counterexamples to expose assumptions and define expected behavior. section 6.0
- Agree on acceptance criteria and record key examples in a business-readable, structured format. section 1.1 section 6.0
- Use the agreed examples to guide implementation, automate acceptance tests, and support later manual or exploratory testing. section 1.1
From feature request to shared understanding
For an online banking feature such as transferring funds between accounts, stakeholders discuss the business goal, expected successful transfers, and cases that should be rejected. The resulting examples define acceptance criteria and provide a basis for automated tests and product documentation. section 2.3.1 section 1.1
Figure 1.2 BDD uses conversations around business rules and examples, expressed in a form that can be easily automated, to reduce lost information and misunderstandings.
A process view shows how conversations about business rules and examples become automatable specifications, helping teams reduce misunderstanding across delivery stages. section 1.1
