Disqus - Latest Comments for mattwynne

Re: The world's most misunderstood collaboration tool

mattwynne — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 20:11:46 -0000

Hi Nancy,

We want them to be both! Cucumber scenarios are a lot like traditional use cases, with the added bonus that they can be automatically validated.

We find that trying to strike a balance between what makes good documentation but also good tests provokes interesting conversation, and better mutual understanding within the team. Ultimately though, if the Cucumber features don't succinctly describe what the system does, you need to fix that. There are plenty of other tools you can use for testing, so save the Gherkin features for describing the behaviour that really matters, and use it to build your executable specifications.

Re: Introducing Example Mapping·Cucumber

mattwynne — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 04:22:14 -0000

HI Jim,

I see Story Mapping and Example Mapping as complimentary techniques that you use at different stages.

Story Mapping helps you to see the overall picture, and build a backlog.

Example Mapping is what you do when you want to build one of those stories, to make sure you fully understand the scope before development starts.

Re: When Cucumbers Go Bad

mattwynne — Tue, 06 Oct 2015 11:45:17 -0000

Hi Mike,

If the business folks are comfortable with the example leaving the specification, I'd go for that and (gasp) delete the test, Otherwise I'd go for option 2 and make it fast so you can at least live with it.

Re: Cucumber School Lesson 9&10 is out!

mattwynne — Thu, 02 Jul 2015 12:34:53 -0000

I'm just going to comment on my own post here to give you an update on progress with the final episode in the series.

We've written the code for both Ruby and Java, and the script is almost finished - just needs some tweaks for Java. It's another monster episode: we're dealing with the whole testing pyramid issue, as well as finding the appropriate level of detail to use in your steps. I think you're really going to like what we have in store for you.

It's school holidays here in bonny Scotland, but as soon as I can get the kids out of the house I'll record the audio, then we'll start laying down the video tracks. I'm optimistic we could have at least the Ruby episode out by the end of next week, but watch this space.

Re: 3 misconceptions about BDD

mattwynne — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 08:08:02 -0000

Brilliant article, thanks! Great points made very clearly. I'll be referencing this article in the future.

May I humbly ask how come you didn't also recommend The Cucumber Book?

Re: GoilHub

mattwynne — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 08:22:52 -0000

Lovely photo!

Re: Open Source Software, Contribute!

mattwynne — Thu, 12 Feb 2015 13:31:30 -0000

I'm glad you're hooked - we really value your contribution! Thanks for writing this up Richard.

Re: Cucumber School

mattwynne — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 10:18:02 -0000

Hi Len,

I think you might well get some benefit from the Java version of the course then. Also perhaps some of your less experienced colleagues might benefit from watching the videos?

We're planning to explore some of the topics you've mentioned in later episodes, particularly the Combinatorial Explosion one, where we'll talk about the importance of listening to the tests to help give you feedback about the design of the code.

Re: Cucumber School

mattwynne — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 08:27:33 -0000

Hi Len,

Yes, we're definitely concentrating on beginners with this course. I'd hope you'd still learn a thing or two from the material, but it might not be for you.

The first episode is available free: https://fast.wistia.net/emb...

I hope we'll eventually be able to produce a second series which dives deeper. What kind of topics would you like to see covered?

Re: Divergent and Convergent thinking in BDD

mattwynne — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 08:11:46 -0000

Can you give me a good example of a Divergent *problem* to help me understand this better?

Re: Divergent and Convergent thinking in BDD

mattwynne — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 08:10:16 -0000

Thank-you Martin. I'll admit I haven't read this Schumacher book yet (I've read Small is Beautiful) and I rather lazily used it as a reference. It sounds as though I should just remove the reference. Do you agree?

Re: The world's most misunderstood collaboration tool

mattwynne — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 15:50:32 -0000

I'm starting to see two distinct sides to what we think of as BDD[1]. First we explore the requirements as stated using examples. If the BA has done a good job, this is mostly a process of education and knowledge transfer, so that the devs / testers understand as much about the problem domain (business requirements) as possible. If not, it's a chance for everyone to explore the unknowns in the problem domain.

Then we need to nail that down into something we can feed into Cucumber. I agree with Aslak that there's no need for the system specification (if that's what we're calling the Gherkin) to tie itself down to a specific implementation detail like a spreadsheet. But even if we write scenarios at quite an abstract level like Aslak describes, I can see that we're still solutionizing to some extent: there might be other ways for Polly's event to trigger a reminder for Mike than using emails.

I also agree with Brian that what we're really doing is discovering a bunch of business processes and rules. Details are important to help you visualise the system and explore the problem domain, but it's the rules that are the essence of the behaviour you want to actually implement.

Brian, I'm really enjoying this discussion! Would you be interested in writing a guest post on this blog about this subject? Drop me a line matt at cucumber dot pro if you are.

[1] https://cucumber.pro/blog/2...

Re: The world's most misunderstood collaboration tool

mattwynne — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 16:54:39 -0000

I'd really like us to be able to talk about a concrete example now, to see how you make the distinction between a Business Requirement and a System Specification, and how Gherkin scenarios could be used to describe either of them.

Can you give me an example? I'm really interested to explore this some more.

Re: The world's most misunderstood collaboration tool

mattwynne — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 06:11:46 -0000

Interesting. I see Gherkin as sitting right on the bridge between the users / business folks -- the "problem domain" -- and the technical folks -- the "solution domain".

So I'm still not sure whether Gherkin should be used to describe requirements or specifications. We really want Gherkin documents to be read by problem domain experts to give us feedback on whether we're planning to build a solution that they want.

So do you think that means they're specifications?

Re: Cucumber Ruby 1.3.17 Released

mattwynne — Fri, 10 Oct 2014 17:01:07 -0000

Hi Chuck,

Sorry to hear that! If you can post an issue on the Cucumber issue tracker with some clear steps to reproduce, we'll definitely take a look.

Re: Cucumber Limited: Our Business Plan

mattwynne — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 07:33:51 -0000

Hi Sunny,

We don't have any definite plans yet, but lots of people are asking so we'll try to organise something as soon as we can.

Re: CukeUp! New York is Back

mattwynne — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 04:57:43 -0000

Looking forward to meeting you in real life @BeepDog !

Re: Ask Our Data: Does Team Size Impact Code Quality?

mattwynne — Fri, 23 May 2014 07:46:32 -0000

Interesting!

Did you attempt to normalise this for codebase *size*? I'd expect that to correlate with number of team members, and maybe have more of an impact on its complexity.

Re: What’s your favorite DIY family game?

mattwynne — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 16:18:31 -0000

Shithead. Nice mix of luck and skill, you can introduce rules gradually for noobs. Every family should have their own rules!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Can't wait until my kids are old enough to teach them.

Re: solnic.eu

mattwynne — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 05:14:53 -0000

Thanks for everything you've contributed so for - code and ideas. I hope you can find a nice balance so you still get to enjoy doing OSS without it feeling like an addiction. I'm sure the break will do you good, in any case.

And congratulations on becoming a dad!

Re: More Readable Conditionals

mattwynne — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 19:56:24 -0000

This is what Kent Beck calls a Guard Clause. They only make your code better, IMHO.

Re: A criticism of DHH’s post on Dependency Injection

mattwynne — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 16:35:10 -0000

I wish there were space for comments on the original @dhh post. He's giving Ruby programmers a bad name.

Re: Clean cukes: The impersonator pattern

mattwynne — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 08:37:40 -0000

Nice!

In the next version of Cucumber, you'll be able to make your step definitions into a single line.

Extract a method `ensure_logged_in` that calls both those methods, then write your step definition like this:

Given /^I log into ledger as (a path11er|an anonymous user)$/, :ensure_logged_in, :on => :user

What do you think?

Re: Kanban? No, it can't

mattwynne — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 09:56:38 -0000

I like to program, and I like the ideas in kanban because I've found they've helped me create an environment that me and other programmers can flourish in. Good management is about getting out of the way and facilitating creativity in the people being managed, and kanban can be a great tool for that, in my experience.

Re: Should we store state in our steps?

mattwynne — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:26:17 -0000

I wrote a little gem called `the`[1] which I use a lot in Cucumber steps. It only works with ActiveRecord unfortunately, but it's very simple.

It allows me to replace this:
```
Person.count.should == 1
the_person = Person.first
```

..with this:

the_person = the(:person)

I use it a lot for this kind of problem.
[1]https://github.com/mattwynn...