Start from auto tests or workshops?

[Anna Jaworska]

I would like to introduce  Specification by Example to my team.

My idea was to organize SbE workshop(s) to discuss and specify new features. I wanted to introduce Product Owner, Subject Matter Experts and Dev Team with new way of working. And at least for 1-2 first features, do not convince them to write auto tests.

Goal I want to achieve is to improve understanding of requirements and improve reqs specification. So that we fail fast, not during tests or feature DEMO and review.

Knowing my colleagues, having examples will naturally trigger the need for moving the examples to auto tests (this decision would come from the Dev Team, not from outside).

On the other side, PO is forcing us to start with auto tests. I can see that Developers are not happy with his idea (unfortunately, Devs in my team are not keen to test).

Could you share your experience, what worked in your case? Going entire process (from workshop to fully automated tests) at once. Or rather experiment with workshops and examples, familiarize with it, and later use auto test framework to compete the flow.

[Gojko Adzic]

Hi,

I'd suggest starting with collaborative analysis workshops first, then
getting the examples into tests as a separate activity. the PO and
subject matter experts don't really need to be concerned with
automated tests, as long as they know that the right tests will get
done.

start with workshops, and if they are so keen on automated tests, then
introduce the workshops as a way to ensure that everyone's perspective
is covered by the tests. developers can then take the resulting
examples and automate later.

gojko

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[Anna Jaworska]

Thanks for the answer. That's the clue I needed: have the right scenarios to ensure, that the right tests are done at the end.

In the meantime, I found in our company developer who is SbE enthusiast and practitioner. I hope he inspire my team and share his experience, so that they are even more motivated 

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[David Evans]

Anna

I absolutely agree with Gojko that the right priority is to use workshops to collaboratively explore examples before concerning yourselves with the task of automation.

Something I see over and over is that if you start with the "goal" of test automation, your team will create tests that are optimised for the machine, but sub-optimal for human understanding. Whereas if you start with the goal of getting to a shared understanding of a feature through exploring concrete examples, then you will create examples that are meaningful and useful for human beings and as a bonus you will also have good tests that you can automate. 

The key is to always do this exercise of exploring examples before implementation and involve the people who will be responsible for implementation of the feature and the tests (i.e. the developers) as well as the Product Owner (or other business representatives.) Then the subsequent automation of the tests is much more likely to be straightforward because the system design will more closely reflect the way the examples are expressed, hence the test automation layer will be thinner and cleaner. 

Regards,

David

[Per Lundholm]

Anna,

Seek to understand the rationale behind the PO obsession on automatic testing. If dev are not keen on testing, that may be a clue.

In my opinion, people often confuse testing with specification. Specification strive to find the business rules while testing will check compliance with those rules plus a lot more, like stressing the system. 

/Per

[Anna Jaworska]

Your guess is correct. One of the pain points of our development team was lack of drive for tests. "Was", because after we started experiments with Spec by Example and some more efforts to raise their awareness on the automated testing, they took the initiative in the test area.

Spec by Example workshop we did, got very good feedback both from PO, developers and tester. we all decide to use this approach for new features. 

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Anna Jaworska

Senior Scrum Master

Motorola Solutions Systems Polska Sp. z o.o.

Ul.Czerwone Maki 82

30-392 Krakow, Poland

KRS 146875 – Poland