Executable Specifications with Scrum: A Practical Guide to Agile Requirements Discovery

by Mario Cardinal

Effective specifications are essential to any significant software development project, and agile projects are no exception. Traditionally, "user stories" have been central to developing specifications in agile environments, but while these are indispensable, they have not proven sufficient. In "Agile Specifications," Mario Cardinal offers simple best practices for creating specifications that are more accurate, can be used to automate program code verification, and significantly improve the likelihood of project success. Cardinal integrates and simplifies proven techniques from practices such as FIT, ATDD, and BDD, showing how to use "executable examples" to verify that an application under construction meets your specifications - and to verify this "repeatedly, at any time." Cardinal's techniques help you go beyond merely plotting user stories to actually implementing them effectively (and quantitatively). He helps you establish a ubiquitous language for connecting requirements directly to architecture, and for establishing highly-effective roles for business analysts and architects within agile project teams.

192 pages, Paperback

First published June 28, 2013

Reviews

[Gopal Katragadda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent compendium of practices for conducting a requirements discovery in uncertain environments. These practices support test driven development and iterative discovery of requirements.

[Christophe Addinquy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a short book and frankly quite a deception. There is no so much room for "executable specifications" here, but instead a text mostly dedicated to the newbies. One of the original things (and possibly the source of proud of the author) is about the concept of "restrictions" for non-functionnal requirements. I didn't find it convincing, far from it. Not worth reading.
Ma note de lecture en Français ici

[Christina Jain · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short but well-structured introduction on agile test driven development. This book is useful for product managers and engineering leads alike, as Cardinal provides ample detail on how to structure user stories (i.e. given-when-then) as well as the technical implementation of acceptance tests (red-green-refactor). The book unfortunately provides few practical case studies, so the reader must go elsewhere to seek examples of his suggested guidelines in practice.