Behavior-Driven Development: A case study on its impacts on agile development teams

Abstract

Software development practices which enhance software quality and help teams better develop collaboratively have received attention by the academic community. Among these techniques is Behavior-Driven Development (BDD), a development method which proposes software to be developed focusing primarily on its expected behavior. In this context, this paper investigates how BDD impacts agile software development teams. In order to achieve this, we have conducted a case study on a mobile application development environment which develops software using agile. In total, 42 interviews were performed. Our results indicate that BDD can have positive impacts, increasing collaboration among team members, and negative impacts, like difficulties in writing unit tests. We concluded that BDD has more positive than negative outcomes.