Hi Glenn.
On Nov 8, 2007 4:01 PM, Glenn Ford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
It seems that what I'm coming to understand of the direction of this
story concept is that there is a lot of emphasis being put on ensuring
we keep things at the business level. I can appreciate the elegance
of it certainly, but when I think of what I would really want to gain
from this story-based testing process, I feel like it cuts out room
for some really cool ideas. Maybe you can help me see where they
would fit.
I have in mind a scenario where a customer says "I tried to log in and
it blew up!" I take what they say with a business perspective and
check my story and say "hey I've got a login story and it works" but
that doesn't leave room for the fact that, slighty away from the norm
of the usual login procedure, this particular user clicked another
link in the middle of the process that changed some background
variable, breaking the process at the final login step. I would then
want to write a story similar to the usual login, but with the ACTUAL
details of what the customer did to ensure I could duplicate, fix, and
then never have this problem creep up again.
I completely agree.
My story, in order to be
of use to me, would HAVE to have steps like "click this button"
because, quite frankly, as a developer I find that's the sort of thing
that can break my code and so I would want a story to account for it.
Yes, exactly. In this example, the UI domain is the most useful
domain to express the (bogus) behaviour, so it's the right thing to
do. The scenario might be something like:
Scenario: press the Explode button whilst filling in form
Given I navigate to the Submit order page [I'm loving these infix
parameters!]
And I set first name to Dan and second name to North
When I click the Explode button
Then nothing should happen
And the current page title should be Submit order
Now, the whole of this scenario is in UI domain terms. It doesn't
matter what business function I'm trying to achieve here - the
description is about some bogus behaviour in my implementation (the
Explode button should be disabled whilst I'm capturing data)
So it's fine to express scenarios in either business domain terms to
describe actual business flow, or UI terms to describe the user's
interactions with the application. The confusion starts when you mix
the two domains in the same story or at least in the same scenario.
A user following my intended user-flow, then deviating in a way I
didn't predict. From the business end, they still followed the login
process, they just had one little different quirk along the way.
Yes, and it's that quirk in this particular UI that you want to
capture with this scenario.
Is there a way to get this kind of thing but still keep to the ideal
business perspective?
You're trying to do a different thing here. The audience is
different (probably a tester or UI designer rather than a business
stakeholder) and they'll be using a different vocabulary.
Would I just simply "word" it in a way that the
simple little thing they did had a business description? Or is that
an indication that I have stupid things on my page that shouldn't even
be an option? Or is there a "happy medium" here as well between
business and ui perspectives of stories?
See above - as long as you keep the distinction between domains when
you are describing a scenario, you'll probably be ok.
Glenn
Cheers,
Dan
On Nov 8, 2007, at 6:58 AM, David Chelimsky wrote:
> On Nov 8, 2007 12:17 AM, Ben Mabey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> David Chelimsky wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>>> ... the philosohy that Dan is
>>> espousing: expressing stories in the business domain rather than
the
>>> UI domain (btw Dan, that was brilliantly put).
>> What exactly do you and Dan mean when you say that the stories
>> should be
>> expressed in the business domain rather than the UI domain?
(BTW, is
>> there a link to a Dan North post abou that?)
>
> Sorry - there are two different threads going on about this topic
> right now - the other one is on the rspec-devel list and that was
> where Dan posted that statement:
>
> http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/rspec-devel/2007-November/004259.html
>
> Keep in mind that User Stories are oft described as "a token for a
> conversation", and that even with acceptance criteria spelled out,
> whether the button says "Create New Account" or "Enter" is rarely of
> sufficient business value to express that in a story. That's the
sort
> of detail that comes out when you say to your customer "the entry
form
> is done, why don't you come by so I can show it to you," as
opposed to
> in the iteration planning meeting.
>
> In the end it really does boil down to what the customer feels is
> necessary in order to accept the software. If the customer really
DOES
> care about what the button says, he or she may want that expressed
in
> a story. But even then, saying "And I press Create New Account"
still
> leaves things flexible enough so that you could be describing a web
> app, a GUI app, a touch-screen app, etc. The only thing this doesn't
> work for would be a command line app. So maybe "And I tell the
system
> to Create New Account" would leave room for that as well. Or maybe,
> "And I fold my arms and command the system to Create New Account." I
> kinda like that one!
>
>> From my understanding you
>> are saying that the steps that say "user types in such and such"
and
>> user "hits the login button" are too UI specific and don't really
>> have
>> much to do with the business domain. Is that correct?
>
> Unless the business IS software, like a text editor, yes.
>
>> I think that this is a part of writing stories that I am somewhat
>> struggling with, meaning how specific should these stories be in
>> explaining the view? At RubyConf during your presentation (great
>> job,
>> BTW!) you mentioned how you like to spec out your views first.
>
> Ah - confusion. I DO like to spec my views first - when I get down
to
> the Spec Framework.
>
> In our example at RailsConf EU, we talked about a Cup Tracker (as in
> Rugby, which was going on at the time). Take a look at the example
> story:
>
>
http://rspec.rubyforge.org/svn/branches/railsconfeu2007/tags/chapter1/stories/plan_cup.rb
>
> This story really rides this whole line very nicely. We're
describing
> software that presents a view of something abstract, and we do so
with
> some detail about what it presents - but there is nothing in it that
> says "when I click this button" or "when I enter this text."
>
> Now look at this version (same story, w/ the steps filled in):
>
>
http://rspec.rubyforge.org/svn/branches/railsconfeu2007/tags/chapter4/stories/plan_cup.rb
>
> Note how the implementations of the steps are starting to get into
the
> views. That's where that level of detail starts to play out.
>
> Now look at this:
>
>
http://rspec.rubyforge.org/svn/branches/railsconfeu2007/tags/chapter4/spec/views/cups/show.rhtml_spec.rb
>
> That spec was arrived at with the very granular red-green-refactor
> process of TDD with a focus, naturally, on behaviour, design and
> documentation (It just occurs to me that behaviour, design and
> documentation are B, D and D - interesting ...).
>
> Now some people look at that spec and scream "holy crap - look at
all
> the duplication - all that mocking - so brittle!." I won't disagree
> that there is lots of duplication with other parts of the system, a
> lot of mocking, and changes to the views would require changes to
this
> spec (brittle). And, looking back at this, I might want to break
that
> spec up into more granular examples. While it speaks very well
looking
> at the code, running it would only tell you that "/cups/show.rhtml
> should display the chart."
>
> But check this out! The implementation of that spec, with all that
> mocking, IS the spec for the controller and model. That single spec
> tells us about the structure that the model should expose (NOT the
> actual structure necessarily - just what it should expose to things
> like views that want the models to be easy to use) and what the
> controller should provide for the view.
>
> So this is all about discovery - starting from the outside and
moving
> in. Implementing the steps that describe domain concepts help us to
> discover some details of the views. Implementing the view specs help
> us to discover the services we want from our controller and the APIs
> we want from our model. I find that to be very compelling.
>
> <snip>
>
>> Where is the happy medium, in your opinion, between
>> keeping the stories concise and letting them drive every aspect of
>> the
>> development? Maybe I am wrong in saying that the stories should
>> drive
>> EVERY aspect of the development?
>
> Well, they should drive every aspect, but not directly. You're not
> going to describe database table structure in your stories, but in
the
> end those structures end up as they do because of the stories.
>
>>>> The Selenium integration is also an interesting idea that you
>>>> might want
>>>> to read about if you haven't seen this post. I'm still trying to
>>>> decided if using Selenium is worth the extra effort (my main goal
>>>> would
>>>> be to test the JS during the acceptance tests)
>
> <snip>
>
>>> Generally speaking, in-browser tests tend to be incredibly brittle
>>> and
>>> run dog-slow. They simply have no choice but to be tied directly
to
>>> low-level implementation details like html structure and element
>>> IDs.
>>>
>>> So I'd recommend only testing what you absolutely must in-browser.
>>> But
>>> given our ajax-laden world, "what you absolutely must" may well
turn
>>> out to be a lot!
>
> <snip>
>
>> I have heard that Selenium suites can become out of hand and end of
>> being more hassle than what there worth. Thanks for the
>> recommendation,
>> I think that sounds like a sensible one.
>>
>> Thanks for taking the time to discuss this,
>
> My pleasure!
>
> Cheers,
> David
>
>>
>> Ben
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