Automating Acceptance Criteria with SpecFlow

1. Acceptance criteria
with SpecFlow
project case study
June 2010

2. #1 CONTEXT

3. Project GQ OSCA
Using Scrum
core team of 5
started in June 2009
Using XP techniques
pair programming
TDD

4. .NET 3.5
C#
SQL 2005
TFS 2008 with STS
Visual Studio 2008 with Resharper
NHibernate
Hitachi Framework
ASP.NET MVC

7. #2 EVOLUTION

14. #3 ACCEPTANCE TESTING

15. As a GQ OSCA Administrator I want to
Create a new EME window for an
academic year so that I can configure
the assessment material for a paper

16. Acceptance Criteria
• User select 'Add New Window' creates new row
for date
• User can use Calendar Select to select Start
Date, End Date, and Publish Date
• For Start Date: Must be within Academic year,
and not within another existing window
• For End Date: Must be after Start Date, and not
within another existing window
• For Commentary Publish Date: Must be after End
Date, and not within another existing window

19. Scenario #1
• EME Start Date is outside Academic Year
– GIVEN
• the EME Start Date is outside of the current
Academic Year
– WHEN
• the GQ OSCA Administrator tries to save the
EME Window details
– THEN
• the form should display an error message stating
that the start date must be within the Academic
Year

20. Scenario #2
• EME Start Date is before EME End Date
– GIVEN
• the EME Start Date is after the EME End Date
– WHEN
• the GQ OSCA Administrator tries to save the
EME Window details
– THEN
• the form should display an error message stating
that the Start Date must be before the End Date

21. Scenario #3
• Existing EME Window and new EME Window
Start Date is in existing EME Window
– GIVEN
• An EME Window already exists
• the new EME Start Date is within the existing EME
Window
– WHEN
• the GQ OSCA Administrator saves the EME Window
details
– THEN
• the form should display an error message stating that
the Start Date must not be within another EME
Window

22. Workflow

33. #4 SPECFLOW

34. Gherkin

37. prepare context
set state

38. execute actions

39. make assertions

47. #5 MORE EXAMPLES

54. Challenges
• Users writing the acceptance tests
• Meaningful tests
• Correct granularity of acceptance tests
• Coverage

55. Reference
• Gherking
http://wiki.github.com/aslakhellesoy/cucumber/
gherkin
• Cucumber
http://cukes.info/
• SpecFlow
http://www.specflow.org/

56. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/uk/