Dispelling inertia towards behavior-driven development : An assessment tool for development practice readiness

Sammanfattning: Behavior-driven development (BDD) is a development practice focusing on behaviors and requirements from users and stakeholders. It is designed to develop behaviors which contribute directly to system outcomes. BDD encourages multiple stakeholders to collaborate by minimizing communication gaps and create a shared understanding of the project between technical and non-technical speakers. As a result, the development process becomes faster and the cost lower. Although BDD has many benefits, there are teams who feel inertia towards using it as their main development practice.This thesis work took place at a company with a strong agile foundation. It had the goal to investigate reasons why teams feel inertia against BDD, and thus contribute to BDD research and assist the company. The assumption that positive motivation would help in dispelling inertia was the idea behind this thesis work, and that a stronger motivation for a practice can be achieved by assessing a team’s suitability for it. To reach the goal of the thesis a qualitative research methodology was used, with a focus on obtaining a better understanding of opinions and behaviors that exist, with rounds of interviews and forms as the main method of data collection. Interviews were also consistently used throughout the thesis work to validate that it followed the right track.The inertia which teams at the company have experienced was clustered into different dimensions. These dimensions were used to develop a self-assessment tool intended to help people starting a project to assess how well BDD might fit their context. It allows people to assess their inertia in the different dimensions identified, and as well as attempting to give an overall guide to readiness, also giving some recommendations where gaps could be identified.The deliverable of the thesis work is the tool for managing inertia against BDD. It was developed in a spreadsheet-format for quick development and easy access for multiple users. However, it is important to highlight that this tool focuses on agile autonomous teams. The tool is not about forcing the development practice on someone but rather acts as an aid in giving insight into how well BDD could work for a specific project and team. Finally, to grasp the validity of the tool teams who had previous success developing projects using BDD at the company were able to try it out to see how well it reflected their project reality. The tool also got tested on teams who felt strong inertia towards BDD, to verify whether it helped them manage it or not.