David Turner - The One Bad Thing about BDD

The Agile Yorkshire Xmas Lightning Talks Competition is a staple of our community’s calendar, featuring eight brilliant speakers who each delivered a 10-minute presentation on a topic that sparked interest and excitement. With the clock ticking and the audience voting for their favourite talk, it was a memorable evening of tech, fun, and festive cheer. This video was filmed at the 2015 event, capturing one of the exciting presentations from the evening. Enjoy! In his talk, David Turner discusses the challenges of using Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) effectively, specifically focusing on the limitations of Gherkin syntax for writing executable specifications. While Gherkin aims to be business-readable, David argues that it often becomes cumbersome and too technical, which may alienate customers and lead to misunderstandings. Instead, he suggests that collaboration with customers can be improved by moving away from rigid Gherkin specifications and adopting a more flexible approach. David showcases how his team used code to write more adaptable specs, producing varied outputs such as text, tables, and even diagrams to better communicate with clients. Ultimately, David advocates for writing specs in a way that enhances collaboration, offering more accessible formats for customers while retaining the benefits of BDD, such as automated testing and system verification.