Behavior Driven Design, or BDD, is a way of designing software that focuses on how users will interact with and use the software, rather than just how it works from a technical perspective. It involves creating detailed, real-world examples of how users will use the software, and using those examples to drive the design and development process.
BDD helps ensure that the software is designed around the needs of the users, and that it’s easy and intuitive to use. It also helps to keep everyone on the same page – designers, developers, and stakeholders – and ensures that everyone is working towards the same goals. It’s a more user-centered approach to software design, and it helps create products that people actually want to use.
We follow Behavior-Driven Development as we progress through building the ecosystem for the Digital Twine using the Make-Manage-Move-Market-Maintain theme at Numorpho Cybernetic Systems (NUMO).
I believe you might be referring to the Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) methodology rather than a design pattern. BDD is an agile software development approach that emphasizes collaboration between developers, quality assurance (QA) teams, and business stakeholders to ensure that software meets business requirements and delivers value to end-users. While BDD is not a design pattern per se, it is a methodology that promotes the use of specific patterns and practices.
In BDD, the focus is on defining and describing the behavior of a system through examples and scenarios. These examples are typically written in a human-readable format called Gherkin, which uses keywords like “Given,” “When,” and “Then” to describe the preconditions, actions, and expected outcomes of a particular feature or user story.
BDD encourages cross-functional teams to collaborate on defining these scenarios and then using them as acceptance criteria for development and testing. It promotes a shared understanding between developers, QA professionals, and business stakeholders, aligning everyone’s expectations and ensuring that the software being developed meets the desired behavior and provides value to the end-users.
By adopting BDD, teams can benefit from improved communication, increased transparency, and a focus on delivering working software that meets the specified requirements. BDD also promotes the use of automated testing frameworks and tools to execute the defined scenarios, allowing for continuous integration and regression testing throughout the development process.
While BDD is not a design pattern, it can be combined with various design patterns and software development practices to ensure the implementation of robust, maintainable, and testable code. Some commonly used design patterns in conjunction with BDD include the Page Object pattern for test automation, the Repository pattern for data access, and the Strategy pattern for implementing different business behaviors.
NI+IN UCHIL Founder, CEO & Technical Evangelist
nitin.uchil@numorpho.com