I'm curious what other people's thoughts are about when to use
Features vs. Scenarios and how much it matters. I'm getting the sense
that the line is a thin one, and has more to do with complexity/time
to develop than anything else. I had originally enforced a fairly
rigid definition of 'Scenario' to represent a particular
variation(e.g. sufficient funds, insufficient funds), but lately I've
been seeing a lot of examples where the scenario is more like a mini-
feature.
ex. Mini-feature style
Feature: Create a new correspondence to an author
Scenario: Caution users about sending 'questionable' types of
correspondence
Scenario: Lock manuscript before creating correspondence
These scenarios are each distinct things so to me are 'features' in a
way but they may also be trivial to implement, so using any kind of
'a feature should generally take n days/weeks to implement' guideline
would make that smell. Also, just because it might be trivial to
implement doesn't mean that I don't want to attach some context/
justification for documentation purposes....
ex.
Feature: Create Correspondence / Caution before creating
'questionable' types of correspondence
In order to help avoid sending embarrassing letters
Users should be forced to confirm they want to proceed
before being able to create a correspondence deemed 'Questionable'
by nature of its type
...
Feature: Create Correspondence / Check for locks
In order to prevent invalid information from being sent out
I should not be able to create a new correspondence
when a lock has been placed on the manuscript
It used to be possible to have multiple features per file so feature
vs. scenario could boil down to: Use feature if you want to annotate.
This is no longer the case and I'm not convinced that was a good idea
anyway. I guess that could still be accomplished by organizing
features via directories or maybe tags.
create_correspondence/
caution_questionable.feature
check_locks.feature
Another style related thing I can't decide on is what my scenarios
should ideally represent.
One style is to use the scenario title as the 'what' and the Given/
When/Thens as the proof(acceptance test)
Scenario: Reject when account has insufficient funds
Given I have an account with $10
And I attempt to withdraw $20
Then I should have $10 in my checking account
And I should see 'Insufficient funds'
Another style is to use the Given/When/Then as the 'what'
Scenario: Insufficient funds
Given I have an account with $10
And I attempt to withdraw $20
Then I should have $10 in my checking account
And I should see 'Insufficient funds'
I find myself leaning toward the former most of the time. This was a
bad example(too simple), but I find the latter style tends to blur the
goal a bit.
Thanks
-lenny
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