How can you measure and demonstrate the value and impact of BDD automation to stakeholders and clients?

A Tech Leader who can define clear goals and metrics in BDD can decrease the cost of testing and bug fixes. It can amplify your Tech Teams by setting up BDD and TDD. Try to imagine adding Code Katas in your journey to create goals and metrics for your BDD Implementation.

Before automating your BDD scenarios, it's essential to define clear goals and metrics. - These goals should align with broader objectives such as reducing testing time and costs, increasing test coverage and reliability, improving team collaboration and alignment, or enhancing customer satisfaction and retention. - Define baseline performance metrics and establish target values for improvement. - Outline how you will collect, analyze, and report data to track progress. This ensures that your BDD automation efforts are purposeful and aligned with your overall objectives.

I love automation, but the primary benefit of Specification by Example/BDD is creating a common understanding of what we will deliver. This means that the developers spend more time writing what the customer really wants and less time writing really good code that we throw away because it does the wrong thing. These are what I call 'Big-B Bugs' - the code does exactly what the developer intended, it just isn't what the customer wanted. If that is the primary benefit, that should drive the metrics. Track the reduction in time spent fixing bugs; numerous teams report reducing this from 30% to 40% of the developer's time down to single digits. I coached a team that got their bugs delivered to Production down to 2 in a year.

To showcase the value of BDD automation, visually illustrate the process and results using tools like dashboards, charts, reports, or videos. Demonstrate how BDD automation accelerates feature delivery, enhances efficiency, and ensures accuracy. Highlight the specific benefits for various stakeholders, including developers, testers, business analysts, product owners, and customers. This approach effectively communicates the impact of BDD automation across the development lifecycle.

BDD's features and scenarios are based on the client's idea of what the platform should look and feel. The result of having a good design of your BDD is assuring your future self that you will not have an "oops" moment.

To showcase the impact of BDD automation, share feedback and testimonials from stakeholders and clients. Highlight how BDD automation has helped them achieve goals, solve problems, or improve their situations. Utilize metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer satisfaction, or retention rate to quantify the benefits of BDD automation. This approach adds credibility and provides tangible evidence of the value of BDD automation.

I have a story about presenting a BDD to a client. While presenting it and asking actionable questions to the client, he then mentioned that there's an updated path towards what he envisioned the platform would be in the future. A good BDD design can show you how the platform works and any possible lapse in pathways or coverage. This alone will quantify the impact of BDD on you and your client.

SBE/BDD is the only development methodology I know of that allows the test automation team to deliver automated tests before the developers finish writing the code. That delivers *huge* value - now the automated tests can be run in a pre-commit hook, before the developer ever opens a pull request. If any of the requirements fail, the developer knows that they must fix the bugs before opening a pull request. You will know that you have done this correctly when the QA team finds *zero* defects. None, zero, zip, nada, because they were all caught in development. Ask the skeptics whether any alternative approach can achieve this. What other methodology doesn't need a bug tracker?

BDD and TDD have different approaches and horizons. For me, it is better to use BDD with TDD. I am using BDD to tackle the data-gathering aspect of any project that I am handling. As it is easy to create and readily readable. I prefer to have these steps before I start the development of my projects. While, TDD is a Design Approach, much more than a Testing Approach. TDD is not Good for Unit Tests or Code Coverage, this is the side effect and not the goal of TDD.

Mitigating risk is one of the most critical views of any founder of any sized company. Not only does BDD answer your project or platform's full features and scenarios. BDD can help your organization achieve Continuous Integration and Delivery. And it has the ability to augment your Tech Team's technical skills. The question now is, when are you implementing your BDD?