March 3, 2017

Learning Serenity BDD: An Automation Framework That Uses Specification by Example (SBE)

When someone is demoing a new automation toolset for the very first time, so many questions in my mind start bubbling to to the surface:
  • This is an open-source tool? What grad student created it? What was the student attempting to achieve with this tool? What problems were they trying to solve?
  • Is the tool on GitHub? Unit tests and code samples provided for us novices learning the tool? 
  • What company supports it and sponsors it? Is the tool popular enough for a community to have built itself around the tool? 
  • Is the tool still being maintained? When was the last time code was checked into the GitHub repository? How many are watching and have starred the GitHub repository?
Although the contract position I start on Monday, begins as a manual testing position -- the best way to learn the system under test -- it'll move to an automation position using the tool Serenity BDD

Note: BDD stands for Behavior Driven Development. Read more about it in Introducing BDD ( Mar. 2006) by Dan North, the creator of JBehave, or on Martin Fowler's blog entry, GivenWhenThen (Aug. 2013).

Also, note: I haven't actually downloaded or installed the tool yet, or even tinkered with it. This is just me, an automation developer, attempting to do online researching, and compiling what I have found. I cannot make any recommendations about this tool and how easy or difficult to use. This is just gathering the initial research.


Serenity BDD Stats


Created by: John Ferguson Smart ( Website | Medium | LinkedIn | @Wakeleo )
Original name: Thucydides (See original blog, first post on Sept 2011 | Old GitHub repo )
Date created: Thucydides (2011) Serenity BDD (Nov. 2014)
Currently being maintained? Yes!
GitHubhttps://github.com/serenity-bdd/serenity-core
Official documentation: The Serenity Reference Manual, v. 1.0.1.1

Build systems: Gradle, Apache Maven, and even Apache Ant
Compatible frameworks:
Running tests remotely: Selenium Grid, Sauce Labs, Browser Stack
Tests that can be run: Web-based UI tests, API tests with REST Assured, and mobile tests with Appium

Serenity now comes in two flavors:
Information on Jan Molak: @JanMolakMediumLinkedIn

Who is John Ferguson Smart? 


According to John's website:

"John is an international speaker, consultant, author and trainer well known in the Agile community for his many books, articles and presentations, particularly in areas such as BDD, TDD, test automation, software craftsmanship and team collaboration. [...] John helps organisations and teams around the world deliver better software sooner through more effective collaboration and communication techniques, and through better technical practices.

"John is the author of the best-selling BDD in Action, as well as Jenkins: The Definitive Guide and Java Power Tools.

"Very active in the Open Source community, John also leads development on the innovative Serenity BDD test automation library, described as the 'best opensource selenium webdriver framework'". 


... John earned a Bachelor of Computer Science from Australia's University of Newcastle in 1991 and a PhD in Computer Science in 1995 from Aix-Marseille University in France.

John has published many articles on LinkedInMedium, and his own blog, relating to BDD, Serenity BDD, and his new idea of a screenplay pattern:

What Is The Philosophy of Serenity BDD?


From reading the documentation, tutorials, and watching many videos of Serenity BDD in action, it seems that the tool is all about one thing: Readability.
  • Readability of what, exactly the tests are doing.
  • Readability of the results of the tests, after they are run. 
As an automation developer, is very easy to get mired down in the code when using an automation framework. Is the automation code DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself), is it easy to maintain, and is it readable? How is the automation framework structured, is the architecture as good as it could be?

Most of the software development team, though, are not coders. How can you show the business analysts, the product owners about what the tests actually do, and what it means when the tests pass or fail?

John Ferguson Smart's solution was to use Specification By Example.

What Is Specification By Example?


Specification by example is a subject we have talked about in this blog back in January, mentioned by Agile Coach Greg Tutunjian when he spoke at a Ministry of Testing - Boston Meetup

Greg Tutunjian, during his talk, defined Specification by Example: (SBE) as "A collaboration method for specifying requirements and tests, Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) and Behavior Driven Development (BDD)". 

The term was first seen in Martin Fowler's blog SpecificationByExample dated March 2004, 
"I was attending a workshop at XP/Agile Universe in 2002 when the phrase 'Specification By Example' struck me as a way to describe one of roles of testing in XP [...]
"Specification By Example isn't the way most of us have been brought up to think of specifications. Specifications are supposed to be general, to cover all cases. Examples only highlight a few points, you have to infer the generalizations yourself. This does mean that Specification By Example can't be the only requirements technique you use, but it doesn't mean that it can't take a leading role.
"[...] One of the great things about specification by example is that examples are usually much easier to come up with, particularly for the non-nerds who we write the software for".

What Is Serenity BDD?


Originally called Thucydides, named after the Ancient Greek historian who wrote History of the Peloponnesian War, Serenity BDD is an integrated test automation framework. From The Serenity Reference Manual, Introduction:

"Serenity BDD is an open source library that aims to make the idea of living documentation a reality.

"Serenity BDD helps you write cleaner and more maintainable automated acceptance and regression tests faster. Serenity also uses the test results to produce illustrated, narrative reports that document and describe what your application does and how it works. Serenity tells you not only what tests have been executed, but more importantly, what requirements have been tested.

"One key advantage of using Serenity BDD is that you do not have to invest time in building and maintaining your own automation framework.

"Serenity BDD provides strong support for automated web tests using Selenium 2, though it also works very effectively for non-web tests such as tests that exercise web services or even call application code directly.

"The aim of Serenity is to make it easy to quickly write well-structured, maintainable automated acceptance criteria, using your favorite BDD or conventional testing library. You can work with Behavior-Driven-Development tools like Cucumber or JBehave, or simply use JUnit. You can integrate with requirements stored in an external source (such as JIRA or any other test cases management tool), or just use a simple directory-based approach to organize your requirements".


Screenshot used in the Serenity Reference Guide.

Serenity BDD Demo:


Serenity BDD - Tutorial 1
John Ferguson Smart, May 2016



Serenity BDD Tutorial #2 - Introducing Screenplay
John Ferguson Smart, May 2016

What is the ScreenPlay Pattern?


From "Beyond Page Objects: Next Generation Test Automation with Serenity and the Screenplay Pattern" by John Ferguson Smart (March 2016)

"The Screenplay Pattern (formerly known as the Journey Pattern) is the application of SOLID design principles to automated acceptance testing, and helps teams address these issues. It is essentially what would result from the merciless refactoring of Page Objects using SOLID design principles. It was first devised by Antony Marcano between 2007 - 2008, refined with thinking from Andy Palmer from 2009. It didn’t receive the name 'the Journey Pattern' until Jan Molak started working with it in 2013. Several people have written about it under this name already, however, the authors now refer to it as the Screenplay Pattern.

"The Screenplay Pattern is an approach to writing high quality automated acceptance tests based on good software engineering principles such as the Single Responsibility Principle, and the Open-Closed Principle. It favours composition over inheritance, and employs thinking from Domain Driven Design to reflect the domain of performing acceptance tests, steering you towards the effective use of layers of abstraction. It encourages good testing habits and well-designed test suites that are easy to read, easy to maintain and easy to extend, enabling teams to write more robust and more reliable automated tests more effectively".


ScreenPlay: the next stage in automated acceptance testing
John Smart/Jan Molak, Nov 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eODK3WS6cM

Need Personalized Training?


Receive Personalized Training By The People Who Developed The Software! Advertised on John Ferguson Smart's site is Serenity BDD Mentoring Packages:

"Our tailored mentoring packages ensure that you get the most out of your Serenity BDD test automation suite, whether you are already a test automation veteran or you are entirely new to test automation in Java.

"Each mentoring package includes:
  • Support for up to 2 people for the smaller packages, and up to 4 people for the larger packages
  • An initial onsite visit to review the current tests and work with the team members
  • Regular remote pairing/mentoring sessions working on your production tests with up to 2 people working together on the same session
  • A monthly webinar covering Serenity best practices, news and updates
  • Exclusive access to premium training videos and resources
  • High priority email support for questions between mentoring sessions
"Above all, this program gives you a privileged access to the most authoritative source of information about Serenity BDD - the framework authors themselves, John Ferguson Smart and Jan Molak.

"Wakaleo Consulting can provide both training and full enterprise support for your Serenity BDD test framework, including help with installation, configuration and usage guidelines, as well as feature requests and custom integration work. We offer yearly support contracts backed with a service level agreement".

Need Even More Paid Training?


There is what John Smart calls a "Serenity Dojo", where over the course of nine months students of his dojo can scale a belt system, going from a white belt to black belt first by getting a personalized training packages from the library of fifty online videos, training workshops, and mentors.

"Onboarding: (4 to 6 weeks)
  • "Initiation: An initial 1-2 day workshop evaluates the team's current level and establish a tailored programme suited to the team's specific needs.
  • "Preparation: During the period leading up to the first immersion (typically around 4-6 weeks), team members become familiar with the online course material".
Immersion: (2 to 12 weeks)

"This phase uses individual and group workshops, mentoring, and active learning exercises to draw out the full potential of each team member, and to help them apply the practices to their own real- world projects.
  • "Workshops: One full week of face-to- face workshops helps participants validate and build on what they learnt during the onboarding. Progress is made visible and celebrated with formal grading and award ceremonies.
  • "Applied coaching: Assisted by their mentors, team members learn to apply what they have learnt to their real-world projects".
Accompaniment ( 6 to 9 months)

"After the immersion ends, teams go back to their routine. But the learning process doesn't stop there!
  • "Remote Mentoring: Team members continue to benefit from the support of their dedicated mentor, in the form of remote coaching and mentoring sessions.
  • "Followup workshops: Every 6 months the team members get to attend a followup immersion to help them further consolidate and expand their skills".


... Y'know, f I ever get into consulting, I need to remember this "software engineering education as marital arts" metaphor that I keep on seeing. Saying that I use Order and Discipline to write code is so much better than how I usually do things:
  • Randomly Googling stuff in a panic
  • Spending an evening feeling inferior studying other smarter and wiser developer's unit tests
  • Spending days trying to get a blasted tool to install on my environment
  • Writing code in fits and spurts
  • Searching StackOverflow for edge cases.
... Then again, I only have been coding on-the-job for a bit over two years. It gets better... right? Right?

And of course, thank you very much, John Smart for your words of encouragement!



Until Next Time, Happy Testing!



-T.J. Maher
Twitter | LinkedIn | GitHub

// Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test, Software Tester since 1996.
// Contributing Writer for TechBeacon.
// "Looking to move away from manual QA? Follow Adventures in Automation on Facebook!"

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