Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) is an agile software development approach that emphasizes collaboration between developers, testers, and business stakeholders to ensure that the software meets the desired requirements. It involves creating automated acceptance tests based on the expected behavior of the software before any development takes place. One popular tool for implementing ATDD is the Robot Framework. Robot Framework is an open-source test automation framework that allows for easy creation and execution of acceptance tests. It provides a simple and readable syntax, making it accessible to both technical and non-technical team members. Robot Framework supports keyword-driven testing, allowing testers to define reusable test steps using keywords that can be easily understood by all stakeholders. ATDD using Robot Framework follows a cycle of defining acceptance criteria, writing tests based on those criteria, and then implementing the corresponding functionality to pass the tests. This approach ensures that the software is developed based on the desired behavior and reduces the risk of miscommunication between team members. By adopting ATDD with Robot Framework, development teams can benefit from increased collaboration, improved test coverage, and faster feedback loops. The automated acceptance tests serve as living documentation, providing clear specifications for the software's expected behavior. They also help identify any regressions or breaking changes when new features are added or modifications are made to the existing codebase. Overall, Acceptance Test Driven Development using Robot Framework offers a structured and collaborative approach to software development, ensuring that the delivered software aligns with the desired requirements and meets the expectations of all stakeholders.

1. Acceptance Test Driven
Development
using
Robot Framework
Pekka Klärck <peke@eliga.fi>
Janne Härkönen <jth@reaktor.fi>
© Copyright Nokia Siemens Networks
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

2. Acceptance Test Driven Development
● Common understanding
● Ubiquitous language
● Executable requirements/examples
● Living documentation
● Also known as story test driven development,
behavior driven development, executable
requirements, specification by example, ...

3. The ATDD cycle
© Image copyright Elisabeth Hendrickson

4. Discuss phase
● Whole team is involved in discussing the
problem and the solution
● Team members gain shared understanding and
common vocabulary
● Concrete examples clarify the solution
● The examples can later be automated

5. Development phase
● The specified examples guide the
implementation work
● Automation of the examples can be done in
parallel with feature implementation
● The whole team is responsible on automation
● In the end, all the automated examples pass
when run against the implementation

6. Deliver phase
● Implemented features are demonstrated to all
stakeholders
● Original examples are executed against the
produced software
● Feedback serves as input to the next
discussion phase

7. Robot Framework
● Generic test automation framework
● Utilizes the keyword-driven testing approach
● Suitable both for "normal" automation and ATDD
● Implemented with Python
● Runs also on Jython (JVM) and IronPython (.NET)
● Open source
● Apache 2.0 License
● Sponsored by Nokia Siemens Networks
● Active development and community

8. High level architecture

9. Simple tabular syntax

10. Executable specifications

11. Data-driven test cases

12. Key features
● Creating higher level keywords in test data
● Easy to create domain specific languages
● No programming skills needed
● Variables
● Tagging test cases
● Selecting tests, statistics, ...
● Simple test library API
● Easy to create custom libraries

13. Separate test data editor (RIDE)

14. Clear reports

15. Detailed logs

16. Rich ecosystem
● Generic test libraries
● Web testing, Swing, SWT, Windows GUIs,
databases, SSH, Telnet, ...
● Build tool integration
● Outputs also in machine readable XML format
● Plugins for Jenkins/Hudson, Maven, Ant, ...
● Text editor support
● Emacs, Vim, TextMate, ...

17. For more information
● Bridging the Communication Gap book by Gojko
Adzic: http://acceptancetesting.info
● Robot Framework: http://robotframework.org
● ATDD with Robot Framework article by Craig Larman
and Bas Vodde: http://a-tdd.org
● ATDD with Robot Framework demo:
http://code.google.com/p/atdd-with-robot-framework
● Web testing demo with Robot Framework:
http://bit.ly/rf-web-test-demo

18. Questions?
Thanks!
Pekka Klärck <peke@eliga.fi>
Janne Härkönen <jth@reaktor.fi>