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Acceptance test driven development, or ATDD, is a collaborative practice wherein application developers, software users, and business analysts define automated acceptance criteria very early in the application development process. They then use the acceptance criteria to guide subsequent development work. As John Ferguson Smart explains in this JavaWorld feature, ATDD is a simple process change that can have far-reaching implications for your development projects.
The idea of acceptance tests -- a set of tests that must pass before an application can be considered finished -- is certainly not new. Indeed, the value of testing an application before delivering it is relatively well established.
Traditionally, testers will prepare test plans and execute tests manually at the end of the software development phase. Acceptance testing is done relatively independent of development activities. In some organizations, QA departments also use automated testing tools such as HP's Quick Test Pro; but, again, this activity is generally siloed away from the rest of the development activity.
Testing an application after it has been developed has a number of significant drawbacks. Most importantly, having feedback about problems raised at this late stage of development makes it very difficult to correct bugs of any size. This results in costly rework, wasted developer time, and delayed deliveries.
ATDD takes a different approach. Essentially, ATDD involves collaboratively defining and automating the acceptance tests for upcoming work before it even begins -- a simple inversion that turns out to be a real game changer. Rather than validating what has been developed at the end of the development process, ATDD actively pilots the project from the start. Rather than being an activity reserved to the QA team, ATDD is a collaborative exercise that involves product owners, business analysts, testers, and developers. And rather than just testing the finished product, ATDD helps to ensure that all project members understand precisely what needs to be done, even before the programming starts.
In addition, acceptance tests are no longer cantoned to the end of the project and performed as an isolated activity. Instead, ATDD tests are automated and fully integrated throughout the development process. As a result, issues are raised faster and can be fixed more quickly and less expensively, the workload on QA at the end of the project is greatly reduced, and the team is able to respond to change faster and more effectively.
Let's consider how ATDD typically works in the context of an agile project. As a rule, a software project aims at delivering end-users with a number of high-level "features" (sometimes called functionalities or capabilities). A feature is a general value-proposition relating to something the application can do for the end-user, expressed in terms you might put on a product flyer or press release: for example, a feature of an online real-estate lease-management application might be "Manage property repairs."
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