How do you create a good specification?

A good specification is

• Easy to understand
• Executable
• Acting as an acceptance criteria

An interesting question is "How do you create a good specification?" There are obviously a lot of different ways to end up with a good specification. You may be lucky and randomly end up with something good. There are, however, better ways than to rely on luck.

What is the difference between a specification and a good specification?

What makes one specification a bad specification and another specification a good specification? What is the fundamental difference between two specifications?

Cucumber-JVM Hello world

This is the example I showed at the I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2014 in Bucharest. I created it for your convenience so you should be able to implement it yourself after the presentation.

Before we dive into the example, let me just recap what I am aiming for. I will show you how an example (or specification if you want) can be executed. The example is written in plain text and it is used as the basis for an execution. This example can later be relied upon for regression testing as well as living documentation.

Challenging requirements

I attended a session with Gojko Adzic at Valtech in Stockholm in feb 2012. Gojko had some great comments about requirements and especially challenging requirements. A challenging requirement is a requirement from a customer that there is some kind of issue with and therefore something that will bring you problem.