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Agile Glossary

Given – When – Then

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What is Given – When – Then?

The Given-When-Then formula is a template intended to guide the writing of acceptance tests for a User Story:

  • (Given) some context
  • (When) some action is carried out
  • (Then) a particular set of observable consequences should obtain

An example:

  • Given my bank account is in credit, and I made no withdrawals recently,
  • When I attempt to withdraw an amount less than my card’s limit,
  • Then the withdrawal should be complete without errors or warnings

Tools such as JBehave, RSpec, or Cucumber encourage the use of this template, though it can also be used purely as a heuristic irrespective of any tool.

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Additional Agile Glossary Terms

Integration

"Integration" (or "integrating") refers to any efforts still required for a project team to deliver a product suitable for release as a functional whole.
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User Stories

In consultation with the customer or product owner, the team divides up the work to be done into functional increments called "user stories."
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Automated Build

In the context of software development, build refers to the process that converts files and other assets under the developers' responsibility into a software product in its final or consumable form. The build is automated when these steps are repeatable, require no direct human intervention, and can be performed at any time with no information other than what is stored in the source code control repository.
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Integration

"Integration" (or "integrating") refers to any efforts still required for a project team to deliver a product suitable for release as a functional whole.
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Scrum of Scrums

A technique to scale Scrum up to large groups (over a dozen people), consisting of dividing the groups into Agile teams of 5-10.
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Product Backlog

A product backlog is a list of the new features, changes to existing features, bug fixes, infrastructure changes or other activities that a team may deliver in order to achieve a specific outcome.
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