« Table of Contents »
Previous « Feature Names
The Behaviour Specification Handbook
Behaviour Specifications
What Is A Behaviour Specification Description?
A Behaviour Specification Description (also known in Gherkin as a “Scenario” description) is a one-line, simple, precise summary of an expected behaviour of a software component.
I recommend the description be worded in commonly accepted, everyday business language, without specifying internal technical implementation details.
Each description must be sufficiently precise so that all the Behaviour Specifications of a given software component can be clearly differentiated.
Example Behaviour Specification Descriptions
As an example, say that there is a User Interface component that invokes a back-end service to perform validation of a postal address. The Behaviour Specification Descriptions of this User Interface component could include:
Positive - Should allow a specified postal address to be submitted for validation;Positive - Should transform the submitted address data into a format that is required by the address validation service;Positive - Should invoke the address validation service with the appropriately formatted address data;Negative - Should provide a notification of a technical error when there is an issue communicating with the address validation service;Positive - Should provide a notification of an invalid postal address when the address validation service determines the address is invalid; andPositive - Should provide a notification of a valid postal address when the address validation service determines the address is valid.
The behaviours of this User Interface component explicitly do NOT include anything related to how the back-end service performs the validation. Those types of concerns are only the service’s behaviours and are not the concern of this User Interface component.
Please make a note of these example Behaviour Specification Descriptions, as they will be referred to in some of the following sections.