Comments on: Automating Story Tests

By: Ron Jeffries

Ron Jeffries — Thu, 28 May 2009 09:46:04 +0000

GeePawHill: Certainly if there are no storytests, the rule “all storytests must be automated” is not broken. I wonder, though, how one knows that the whole system works using only microtests. I hope you’ll write about that real soon now.

fkchang: Yes. If storytests are inexpensive enough, they’ll be automated more often. (My point exactly. :) ) Since essentially every storytest will need to be run at least twice, the only excuse we have is that they are too expensive, i.e. we’re not good enough at it yet. Tools like Cucumber can help with that.

By: fkchang

fkchang — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:39:06 +0000

On the other hand, if it were easier to write story tests, there might be less resistance. I’ve had good success with Cucumber, to the point where the COO declared all requirements would be written in Gherkin (the cucumber language, basically executable given when thens and in our case, mostly As as, I would, So that’s for context, some feature injection templates in that case). Long story short, the requirements as stories come down as ready to be automated w/some work from the team.

By: GeePawHill

GeePawHill — Thu, 28 May 2009 05:10:49 +0000

I’ve had systems ship in a pleasing manner that had only microtests, no storytests at all. Essentially, the team served almost entirely as its own customer, and they could write faster and better tests using JUnit. I’m not sure what this means, if anything, in the light of your post. Bash me at will.

By: brettschuchert

brettschuchert — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:11:03 +0000

Well I’ll just chime in here and agree.

I can think of another reason automation is hard. The “story” is too big and so figuring out an example is difficult. If this is a problem, then the solution is to break it down until you can describe a part of what it is you’re trying to do. I’d still want a story to “slice the cake” but if the choice is between a large story hard to describe but one that “slices the cake” or a series of smaller stories that don’t “slice the cake” but can be described, I suppose that’s OK. It should be the exception, however, and not the rule.