Suggestions of a tool for specification on an example where analysts - not developers - write tests?

Question

We aim to initiate a bdd-style approach inspired by Gojko Adzic 's example . Implementation in Java, and developers are already writing junit tests.

The key requirement is that specifications (acceptance tests) can be written, read and maintained by non-developers. The project will work as a flexible team - so great if developers should use specifications. However, I don’t want developers, testers or domain experts to read or write something similar to code.

So far, I have looked at FitNesse , Concordion, and others (e.g. Spock ). I rejected spock and similar tools because they target developers to the main audience. FitNesse seems to satisfy most requirements.

The concordion is probably the favorite: specs look cleaner and simpler.

So my question (actually three):

• Any suggestions on other tools that I should pay attention to?
• Has anyone been successful using a concordion (or other instrument) this way?
• Is the consolion still actively developing / maintained? It is hard to say from the website, and most of the related issues are several years old.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I have worked with several teams using Specification by Example with Concordion. We train our entire team to write Concordion specifications in HTML. Only a small subset of HTML is required, so we can train the beginner in about 30 minutes. Usually we have testers who write the HTML specification when BA or Scrum Master sometimes write them.

We used Eclipse (Web Page Editor) to edit HTML. This works well, except Concordion requires valid XHTML, and Eclipse does not allow validation of HTML as XHTML. This basically shows that the tags are used <br>, and not <br / ">. We consider this in training. We also train the whole team in using source control. Using Eclipse, we have one user interface for editing and source control We also find that having a team using the same IDE is a step towards a cross-functional team.

I know another team where BA writes specifications using a Mac-based HTML editor.

The concordion is actively maintained, quickly responding to the mailing list (Yahoo) and the list of problems. Concordion's code base is stable. Active development over the past year or so has focused on the expansion mechanism, allowing users to add commands and listeners (for example, to capture screenshots when the test fails).

Answer 2

Also take a look at Cucumber and JBehave, both of which let you write specifications in plain text.

If you decide to use FitNesse, you should also look at Slim, which stands for FitNesse instead of Fit. It provides slightly different table formats for Fit, and I found that it suits BDD better.

Answer 3

To update this topic, you can also consider jnario .