Testing and Architecture

🏗️ Technical Excellence: Testing and Architecture

Building a House That Stands Forever

Imagine you’re building the best treehouse ever. You wouldn’t just start nailing boards together randomly, right? You’d want to make sure every board is strong, everyone agrees on the plan, and the whole thing won’t fall down when your friends come to play!

That’s exactly what Technical Excellence is about in Agile. It’s the secret sauce that makes software strong, reliable, and easy to change—like building a treehouse that can grow bigger whenever you want!

🎭 Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)

What is it?

Think of BDD like writing a recipe BEFORE you cook. You don’t just throw ingredients in a pot—you write down exactly what you want the dish to taste like!

Simple Example:

• Instead of saying “make the button work”
• You say “When I click the ‘Buy’ button, I should see a message saying ‘Item added to cart!’”

How It Works

BDD uses special sentences that ANYONE can understand—even your grandmother!

GIVEN I am on the shopping page
WHEN I click the "Add to Cart" button
THEN I should see "1 item in your cart"

See? No computer talk needed! This is called the Given-When-Then format.

graph TD
    A["📝 Write behavior in plain English"] --> B[👥 Everyone agrees it's right]
    B --> C["💻 Developers write code"]
    C --> D["✅ Test checks the behavior"]
    D --> E["🎉 Feature works exactly as described!"]

Why It’s Amazing

👨‍👩‍👧 Three Amigos Practice

What is it?

Remember when you played a game with your friends, and everyone had different rules? Chaos, right?

Three Amigos fixes this! Before building anything, THREE types of people sit together:

1. 🧑‍💼 Business Person (What do customers want?)
2. 🧑‍💻 Developer (How will we build it?)
3. 🧪 Tester (How do we make sure it works?)

A Day in Three Amigos

The Feature: “Users should be able to reset their password”

By asking these questions BEFORE coding, they catch problems early—like checking if you have all ingredients before cooking!

graph TD
    A["🧑‍💼 Business: WHAT we need"] --> D["📋 Clear Requirements"]
    B["🧑‍💻 Developer: HOW to build"] --> D
    C["🧪 Tester: WHAT could break"] --> D
    D --> E["✨ Better Features, Fewer Bugs!"]

Real Example

Without Three Amigos:

• Business: “Add a search box”
• Developer builds it
• Tester: “It crashes with special characters!”
• Developer: “Nobody told me!”
• 😱 Wasted time!

With Three Amigos:

• All three discuss search box together
• Tester asks: “What about special characters?”
• Developer: “Good catch! I’ll handle that!”
• ✅ Problem solved BEFORE coding!

✅ Acceptance Testing

What is it?

Imagine you ordered a pizza. Before you pay, you check:

• ✅ Is it the right size?
• ✅ Does it have the toppings I asked for?
• ✅ Is it hot?

That’s Acceptance Testing! It’s the final check to make sure the software does EXACTLY what was asked for.

Who Decides?

The customer or product owner defines what “done” means:

Feature: Password Reset

✅ User receives email within 1 minute
✅ Link expires after 24 hours
✅ Password must be at least 8 characters
✅ User sees success message

If ALL these boxes are checked, the feature is ACCEPTED! 🎉

graph TD
    A["📝 Define acceptance criteria"] --> B["💻 Build the feature"]
    B --> C["🧪 Run acceptance tests"]
    C --> D{All tests pass?}
    D -->|Yes| E["✅ Feature ACCEPTED!"]
    D -->|No| F["🔧 Fix and try again"]
    F --> C

The Magic Formula

🌱 Emergent Design

What is it?

Imagine you’re drawing a picture. Do you plan every single line before you start? No! You start drawing, see what looks good, and adjust as you go.

Emergent Design means the design “emerges” (grows) as you build. You don’t plan everything upfront—you let the best design appear naturally!

How It Works

1. Start simple - Build the smallest thing that works
2. Learn - See what works and what doesn’t
3. Improve - Make the design better, bit by bit
4. Repeat - Keep learning and improving!

Simple Example:

graph TD
    A["🌱 Start Simple"] --> B["📚 Learn from Users"]
    B --> C["✨ Improve Design"]
    C --> D["🔄 Keep Growing"]
    D --> B

Why Not Plan Everything?

🛤️ Architectural Runway

What is it?

Imagine you’re building a train track. You can’t lay tracks right under the train—you need to build AHEAD of where the train is going!

Architectural Runway is like building tracks ahead of time. It’s the technical foundation that lets new features be added without stopping everything.

Real Example

Without Runway:

• Team: “We want to add video calls!”
• Developer: “We need to rebuild EVERYTHING first…”
• Team: 😱 “That will take 6 months!”

With Runway:

• Team: “We want to add video calls!”
• Developer: “Great! We already prepared for this!”
• Team: 🎉 “Let’s do it!”

How Much Runway?

graph TD
    A["❌ Too Little Runway"] --> B["Teams wait for foundation work"]
    C["❌ Too Much Runway"] --> D["Wasted effort on unused prep"]
    E["✅ Just Right"] --> F["Teams can build features smoothly"]

What Goes on the Runway?

Think of it as preparing ingredients before cooking:

• 📦 Databases ready to store new types of data
• 🔌 APIs ready to connect new services
• 🛡️ Security systems ready for new users
• 📊 Monitoring ready to watch new features

🎯 Putting It All Together

These five practices work together like a superhero team:

graph TD
    A["👥 Three Amigos"] -->|Discuss the feature| B["📝 BDD"]
    B -->|Write behavior specs| C["✅ Acceptance Tests"]
    C -->|Guide development| D["🌱 Emergent Design"]
    E["🛤️ Architectural Runway"] -->|Enables quick building| D
    D --> F["🚀 Great Software!"]

💡 Remember This!

Technical Excellence isn’t about being perfect on day one. It’s about building habits that make your software better every single day!

Just like brushing your teeth keeps them healthy, these practices keep your software healthy:

1. 🎭 BDD = Talk in plain English
2. 👨‍👩‍👧 Three Amigos = Three brains are better than one
3. ✅ Acceptance Testing = Know when you’re done
4. 🌱 Emergent Design = Let good design grow
5. 🛤️ Architectural Runway = Stay ahead of the game

Now go build something amazing! 🚀