What is Acceptance Test Driven Development?

posted by Farhan Mirajkar on February 1, 2024

Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD) is an agile development methodology that focuses on collaboration between developers, testers, and business stakeholders to ensure that a software application meets the specified requirements. The key aspect of ATDD is the creation and automation of acceptance tests before the actual development begins.

Here’s a breakdown of the key components of ATDD:

1. Collaboration: ATDD encourages close collaboration among team members, including developers, testers, and business representatives (such as product owners or domain experts). This collaboration helps in better understanding and defining the acceptance criteria for user stories.

2. User Stories and Acceptance Criteria: Before development starts, user stories are created to describe the functionality or feature to be implemented. Acceptance criteria are detailed conditions that must be met for the user story to be considered complete.

3. Automated Acceptance Tests: Once the acceptance criteria are defined, automated acceptance tests are written based on these criteria. These tests serve as a formal specification for the expected behavior of the system.

4. Test-First Approach: ATDD follows a “test-first” approach, where tests are written before the code implementation. This helps ensure that the development process is driven by the desired behavior and requirements.

5. Continuous Feedback: As the development progresses, the automated acceptance tests are executed regularly. This provides continuous feedback to the team about the status of the application and helps identify any deviations from the expected behavior early in the development cycle.

6. Refactoring: If necessary, developers may refactor the code to make it more maintainable and to improve its design, while ensuring that the acceptance tests still pass.

7. Verification of Business Value: The focus of ATDD is not only on technical correctness but also on delivering business value. The acceptance tests serve as a means to verify that the implemented features meet the business requirements and add value to the end-users.

By emphasizing collaboration and automation, ATDD aims to reduce misunderstandings between stakeholders, improve the quality of the delivered software, and ensure that the development effort is aligned with the business goals. ATDD is often considered a part of the broader family of Test-Driven Development (TDD) methodologies.

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