Charles Bradley

Presentations

The User Story Lifecycle: Just Enough, Just In Time

The key to User Stories is making sure your related practices are just enough, just in time.

We'll discuss the different levels of the User Story life cycle, as well as the entrance and exit criteria for each level. More importantly, we'll discuss which levels are totally optional(many of them are) and which are absolutely vital to maximizing User Story value. We'll also follow an example story through the entire life cycle as it progresses from the request level to an epic, to themes, and finally to the legacy lifecycle level.

Acceptance and Story Testing Patterns

Acceptance Testing, also known as Story Testing, is a practice that can be applied to any software project, Agile or not. However, to achieve the Agile vision of "working software over comprehensive documentation," it's very important that acceptance tests are easily automated, resulting in a phenomenon you may have heard of, called the "Agile Specification."

In this presentation, we'll discuss eight different patterns of expressing acceptance tests so that they are easy to execute and automate. We'll talk about popular patterns like Given/When/Then and Specification by Example, as well other patterns you've probably never seen. Along with delving into the mechanics of each pattern and showing examples, we'll also discuss the most appropriate situations and team contexts to apply each pattern. Attendees will participate in interactive exercises that will teach them how to utilize the patterns, as well as how to pick the patterns most appropriate for the type of requirement being tested.Expressing Acceptance Tests up front, before development begins, is a vital part of Acceptance Driven Development and the executable Agile Specification.