Cucumber Podcast RSS

This month on the Cucumber Podcast Matt Wynne and Seb Rose speak to Chris Glover, a lead test engineer who has been working in a team which has struggled with some of the common pitfalls of learning BDD. Matt invited him onto the podcast to share that story. Shownotes: Serenity - http://www.thucydides.info/#/ Screenplay Pattern (Matt's blog series) - https://cucumber.io/blog/bdd/understanding-screenplay-(part-1)/

This month on the Cucumber Podcast, Seb Rose and Matt Wynne speak to George Dinwiddie, an old friend of the pod and author of a new book "Software Estimation without Guessing". Buy George's book "Software Estimation without Guessing" - https://pragprog.com/titles/gdestimate/ Also mentioned "Thanks for the feedback" by Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/313485/thanks-for-the-feedback-by-douglas-stone-and-sheila-heen/ Follow George on Twitter - https://twitter.com/gdinwiddie

This month on the Cucumber Podcast we welcome Diana Larsen a world-renown author, speaker and co-founder of The Agile Fluency Model. Show notes: - CukenFest Remote - June 3rd-4th -https://cukenfest.cucumber.io/ - Agile Fluency - https://www.agilefluency.org/ - Upcoming events - https://www.agilefluency.org/workshops.php - Virtual Open North America - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-open-north-america-tickets-101659959676 - Books - https://leanpub.com/u/dianalarsenauthor

This month we dig into the financial risks of open-source software. Chairing the conversation is Seb Rose who is joined by his colleague Dermot Canniffee. Answering the questions is Aslak Hellesøy who created Cucumber some 12 years ago. Cucumber's success has led to many of the world's most valuable company relying on its software for critical parts of their codebase. So what are the financial risks for companies who use OSS tooling every day? And who pays when an OSS tool is no longer looked after? If you or your company want to contribute to the success of Cucumber Open, head over to our Open Collective page here -https://opencollective.com/cucumber

This month on the Cucumber Podcast Matt Wynne speaks with Andreas Markussen and Sheeraz Iqbal from Nuuday a Danish company which has recently been on a journey of adopting Behaviour-Driven Development. This is a conversation about their story so far and the challenges they've faced.

This month, Matt Wynne and Seb Rose sat down with Richard Lawrence and Paul Rayner to talk about their new book "Behavior-Driven Development with Cucumber". The book incorporates their many combined years of experience teaching BDD to agile teams. Matt and Seb explore what readers can expect from the book as well as digging into their own experiences teaching and coaching teams in adopting BDD and agile practices. Shownotes Pick up a copy of Richard and Paul's "Behavior-Driven Development with Cucumber" on Amazon.com (https://www.amazon.com/Behavior-Driven-Development-Cucumber-Specification-Example/dp/0321772636) or wherever you buy books. Behind Closed Doors - Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby (https://pragprog.com/book/rdbcd/behind-closed-doors) The Goal - Eliyahu M. Goldratt(https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0884271781) How to split a user story - Richard Lawrence (https://agileforall.com/resources/how-to-split-a-user-story/) High Fidelity - (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Fidelity_(film)

This month on the Cucumber Podcast we have another conversation with Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin. They have released their latest book, Agile Testing Condensed (https://leanpub.com/agiletesting-condensed). In this conversation, Matt Wynne and Seb Rose ask the pair about the book and testing best practices in modern agile teams.

This month on the Cucumber Podcast we sit down with Alex Schladebeck who identifies as a Tester. Sal Freudenberg and Steve Tooke - co-founders of Cucumber - ask her about her recent keynote appearance at CukenFest London as well as her thoughts on the role of modern testers on agile teams. Alex can be found on Twitter https://twitter.com/alex_schl

This month on the podcast we speak to Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin about testing in DevOps. The conversation covers the whole team approach and why testers are as important as ever. Asking the questions from Cucumber is Matt Wynne, Sallyann Freudenberg, and Steve Tooke. Shownotes: Janet & Lisa's website - https://agiletester.ca/ Agile Testing - https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Testing-Practical-Guide-Testers/dp/0321534468/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1547738499&sr=1-3&keywords=agile+testing More Agile Testing - https://www.amazon.com/More-Agile-Testing-Addison-WesleySignature/dp/0321967054/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 Agile Testing Essentials - https://www.frontrowagile.com/courses/agile-testing-essentials/overview On Twitter: Janet Gregory (@janetgregoryca) Lisa Crispin (@lisacrispin)

This month on the Cucumber Podcast we speak to Stefan Hofer about Domain Storytelling. Stefan describes Domain Storytelling as "a workshop format which helps people have a conversation about their domain; the idea is that domain experts tell stories that explain how people and software systems work together." Although well known and celebrated in the Domain Driven Design community, Domain Storytelling is starting to be discovered by software teams wanting to find innovative ways to build shared understanding. Asking the questions from Cucumber is Matt Wynne and Sallyann Freudenberg. Shownotes: http://www.domainstorytelling.org/ Talk: Find Context Boundaries with Domain Storytelling - Stefan Hofer and Henning Schwenter - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1ykXnl6r7s CukenFest London - Our annual BDD conference happening on April 4th-5th 2019 - http://cukenfest.cucumber.io/ The "Swim" System - http://wiki.eclipse.org/images/2/20/Swim_System_PNSQC_2007_Paper.pdf Stefan's Twitter - https://twitter.com/hofstef

What happens when you transition to agile practices at a big organisation? How can you do agile software development at scale? This month Sinead Shackley (https://twitter.com/smshackley) and Dave Anderson (https://twitter.com/davidand393) from Liberty IT and Paul Shepheard (https://twitter.com/HamletArable) from Deutsche Bank share their stories. ** CukenSpace Charlotte - December 12th-13th 2018 ** A special BDD conference for testers, developers and BAs. Keynote from Ellen Gottesdiener on creating structured conversations to break down your product backlog. Matt Wynne, Steve Tooke, George Dinwiddie, Marlena Compton and other agile and BDD practitioners will be there. Book w/ promo-code "podcast" for 30% off your ticket. Learn more on our website -https://cucumber.io/events/2018/12/12/cukenspace-charlotte

This month on the Cucumber Podcast, Sal Freudenberg and Matt Wynne speak to Rebecca Wirfs Brock. Rebecca is probably best known as an author of Designing Object-Oriented Software (1990) and Object Design (2002) and works as an independent software consultant based in Portland. For the past couple of months, Rebecca has occasionally jumped on the Cucumber Pro Mob (mob programming) to watch the team, observe the team's heuristics, and contribute to the product. The conversation follows that journey and how other teams out there can notice their own heuristics and ultimately deliver higher-quality software. You can find Rebecca on Twitter - https://twitter.com/rebeccawb

Voici une édition spéciale du podcast Cucumber. En français, s’il vous plaît! Julien Biezemans, co-fondateur de Cucumber Ltd, discute BDD avec Bruno Boucard. Julien et Bruno seront à Paris pendant deux jours pour une formation sur le BDD les 11 et 12 octobre 2018 - https://cucumber.io/events/bdd-kickstart-paris

This month on the Cucumber podcast, Aslak Hellesøy and Steve Tooke speak to Kenny Baas and Bruno Boucard about the relationship between Domain-Driven Design (DDD) and Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD). While both share many similarities, there isn't a great deal of crossover between the two communities. Our two guests want to change that by demonstrating that both practices and communities have more in common than they may think. ### Show notes [Kenny's article about DDDBDD](http://blog.xebia.com/combining-domain-driven-design-and-behaviour-driven-development/) [Bruno on Twitter](https://twitter.com/brunoboucard)/ [Kenny on Twitter](https://twitter.com/kenny_baas) [DDD conference in Denver, Sept 2018](http://exploreddd.com/) [Event Storming introduction](http://ziobrando.blogspot.com/2013/11/introducing-event-storming.html) [Example Mapping introduction](https://cucumber.io/blog/2015/12/08/example-mapping-introduction) [Kanddinsky Conference, Berlin, October 2018](https://kandddinsky.de/) [Cucumber on Twitter](https://twitter.com/cucumberbdd)

Hiya! This month on the Cucumber Podcast we speak to Ron Jeffries and Chet Hendrickson. They are probably best known for their association with the Agile Manifesto - Ron, one of the authors, Chet the first signatory. They've both done some other stuff too... This is a wide-ranging conversation hosted by Matt Wynne with fellow Cucumber people Sal Freudenberg, Steve Tooke and Aslak Hellesøy. Show notes Cucumber Clinic - Let us review your scenarios! - https://clinic.cucumber.io/ Transcript of this conversation - https://cucumber.io/blog/2018/06/06/ron-and-chet-podcast Chet on Twitter - https://twitter.com/chethendrickson Ron on Twitter - https://twitter.com/RonJeffries Cucumber on Twitter - https://twitter.com/cucumberbdd

This month on the Cucumber Podcast we speak to Beth Skurrie, who is the maintainer of the open-source project, Pact. Pact falls into the category of contract testing and with the advent of microservices and continuous delivery, it's getting more and more important. Seb Rose takes the hosting duties with extra questions from Steve Tooke. Shownotes: Learn more about Pact - https://docs.pact.io/ Integration Tests are a Scam by JB Rainsberger - http://blog.thecodewhisperer.com/permalink/integrated-tests-are-a-scam What is Pact good for? What is Pact not good for? https://docs.pact.io/documentation/what_is_pact_good_for.html Previous podcast about Approval Testing w/ Llewellyn Falco https://cucumber.io/blog/2017/01/26/approval-testing

This month on the Cucumber Podcast, we speak about The Screenplay Pattern. As John Ferguson describes it on his [site](http://serenity-bdd.info/docs/articles/screenplay-tutorial.html), "the Screenplay Pattern is a powerful and elegant approach to designing and implementing automated tests, providing a number of improvements over more traditional approaches such as the Page Objects model." The conversation covers why you should consider following the Screenplay Pattern and its potential drawbacks. The conversation closes with our guests providing a single tip for folks looking to try out the Screenplay Pattern on their own. Joining your host Aslak Hellesøy are John Smart, Jan Molak, Angie Jones, Nat Pryce, Matt Wynne and Steve Tooke. ### Shownotes: CukenFest London, April 19th-20th - Join us for our annual conference focused on helping you build stronger ties between business and IT. Keynotes from Dan North and Ulrika Malmgren. More details on our [event page](http://cukenfest.cucumber.io/) [Page Objects Refactored](https://ideas.riverglide.com/page-objects-refactored-12ec3541990) [Screenplay tutorial](http://serenity-bdd.info/docs/articles/screenplay-tutorial.html)

The history of testers and developers working together is a bumpy road. Throughout the evolution of software development, testers have struggled to be treated as equals and developers have lacked the understanding of why they should care. Yet some teams do it well - both roles have a good experience and the resulting software benefits from the different perspectives. In this podcast, Franziska and Maaret speak to Matt Wynne to share some tips on how to improve this in your team. Show notes: CukenFest London, April 19th-20th. Join us for our annual conference focused on building stronger ties between business and IT. Keynotes from Dan North and Ulrika Malmgren. More details on our event page - http://cukenfest.cucumber.io/. Book recommendation - Thanks for the feedback, Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. Buy on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Thanks-Feedback-Science-Receiving-Well/dp/0670014664 Mob programming podcast w/ Woody Zuill. Listen - https://cucumber.io/blog/2016/04/19/mob-programming

On the podcast this month we discuss sexual harassment in tech. It's a subject that's been broadly covered in the news and we wanted to explore the experiences of women in tech and practical things we can all do to combat sexual harassment in our own communities. Your host Matt Wynne is joined by Sal Freudenberg, Arti Mathanda, Liz Keogh and Melissa Perri. Share your thoughts on Twitter - https://twitter.com/cucumberbdd

A bit of festive magic for you. We have invited Marcin Floyran and Sebastian Lambla back onto the podcast to discuss VeST (Vertical Slice Technologies). They were last on the podcast about two years ago to talk about Agile Anarchy and we asked them back to talk about VeST. So here it is. Aslak is asking the questions. This is a great listen for those who are interested in building customer-centric, high-quality software products. Topics discussed during the podcast include: - The core concepts of VeST and its benefits. - Why focusing on the customer can be a great first-step for teams steeped in legacy code. - Debunking hexagonal architecture and ports and adapters. - The role of traditional testers and mob testing. Shownotes - Sebastian's blog - https://serialseb.com/serials/vest-redux/ - Agile Anarchy podcast - https://cucumber.io/blog/2016/02/16/agile-anarchy - Kind of Green - Aslak's post about how we are building Cucumber Pro -https://sdjournal.org/bdd-like-jazz/ Shout out the pod on Twitter @cucumberbdd - https://twitter.com/cucumberbdd

On the podcast this month, Matt Wynne speaks to Angie Jones. We first heard about Angie through her posts about BDD, Test Automation and Cucumber on her website. Her blog is a treat, filled with lots of practical advice for modern software teams. Angie now works for Twitter as an Automation Engineer and is a frequent conference speaker. Here's what they discuss on the podcast: Angie's background and her current role at Twitter. Why developers shouldn't lead your automation efforts. How testers can win over the team with BDD and Cucumber. The future of testers in a world of automation. Shownotes: Angie's blog: https://angiejones.tech/

On the podcast this month Seb Rose speaks to Henry Coles, the creator of Mutation Testing tool PIT. Here's how they describe Mutation Testing on the PIT Test website - "Mutation testing is conceptually quite simple. Faults (or mutations) are automatically seeded into your code, then your tests are run. If your tests fail then the mutation is killed, if your tests pass then the mutation lived. The quality of your tests can be gauged from the percentage of mutations killed." *They discuss:* - What is mutation testing? - How widely adopted is this approach in the enterprise? - When and where should you use mutation testing? - What can developers learn from academics? - What are the similarities and differences between Mutation Testing and Property-Based Testing **Shownotes** PIT Test - http://pitest.org/ Quick theories (Property-Based Testing tool) - https://github.com/ncredinburgh/QuickTheories Work at NCR - NCR careers - http://ncredinburgh.com/jobs/

On the podcast this month, Seb Rose and Steve Tooke speak to Allan Kelly, a well-known agile consultant and long-time friend of the pod. **On the podcast the three discuss:*** - Why agile often just means agile software development. - What companies mean when they say "digital transformation". - Advice for ambitious teams who want to spread agile across the organisation. - Allan's personal story into agile consulting. - Why he advocates a #noprojects mindset - Why Seb shares Allan's Dear Customer blog post with all his post-graduate students. Shownotes: - Dear Customer - https://leanpub.com/xanpan/c/Trega15 - Agile on the Beach - http://agileonthebeach.com/ - How buildings learn - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0 https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/0140139966 - Allan on Twitter - https://twitter.com/allankellynet - Allan's blog - https://www.allankellyassociates.co.uk/

This week on the Cucumber podcast Aslak Hellesøy speaks to Pia Mancini, co-founder of Open-Collective, about crowdfunding and our own efforts to raise money to support the open source community. Show notes: Learn more about Open Collective - https://opencollective.com/ Contribute to Cucumber's Open Collective - https://opencollective.com/cucumber Say hi to Pia on Twitter - https://twitter.com/piamancini Open Collective is an OSS project. Visit their Github page - https://github.com/opencollective Share your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter - https://twitter.com/cucumberbdd

Why do cars have brakes? So they can go faster. This week on the Cucumber podcast Aslak Hellesøy speaks to Ben Rady and Josh Chisholm about running fast tests. Everyone knows fast tests are valuable, so why do so many companies abide slow ones? Show notes: Ben's post "Testing with Fire" http://www.benrady.com/2016/11/testing-with-fire.html Josh's OSS tool Finished Promise - https://github.com/featurist/finished-promise Ben's book "Continuous Testing" - https://pragprog.com/book/rcctr/continuous-testing

CukenFest London is coming to town over June 21st-25th. Three events for the Cucumber, BDD, and Agile communities. Learn more about the events on our website - http://cukenfest.cucumber.io/ This month on the Cucumber podcast, Matt Wynne speaks to Simon Powers the founder of Adventures with Agile about Behaviour-Driven Development in banking. Simon was approached by the global investment bank BNP Paribas to review several product teams and to find out why the teams could not complete stories at the end of each sprint and why there was so many defects coming into the sprint. In just 9 months, the defect rate decreased from 34% to 4% and they avoided a very costly rewrite. Listen to this podcast to hear how they did it and the lessons learned along the way. Read the short case study on the [Adventures with Agile website](https://www.adventureswithagile.com/2015/08/27/a-case-study-for-bdd-in-improving-throughput-and-collaboration/) Cucumber and Adventures with Agile are teaming up to run BDD Kickstart, London. A two-day public training course for people who want to learn fundamentals of BDD and Cucumber. Aslak Hellesoy - the creator of Cucumber and author of The Cucumber Book - will teach this course. [Learn more][https://cucumber.io/events/bdd-kickstart-london)

This month on the Cucumber podcast Aslak Hellesøy speaks to David MacIver and Nat Pryce about Property-Based Testing. Shownotes: Join Nat and Aslak in London for CukenFest. June 21st-25th - https://content.cucumber.io/cukenfest-2017 What is Property Based Testing? - http://hypothesis.works/articles/what-is-property-based-testing/ Misadventures with Property-Based TDD - http://natpryce.com/articles/000800.html John Hughes Quickcheck video presentation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi0rHwfiX1Q Small-step TDD with properties - http://natpryce.com/articles/000807.html Snodge - https://github.com/npryce/snodge

Gáspár Nagy is the creator of Specflow, the .NET version of Cucumber. Based in Budapest, Gaspar is an independent BDD and Specflow trainer and coach. He is also writing a new book about Specflow in collaboration with Seb Rose. Joining him on the podcast this month are Aslak Hellesoy, Matt Wynne and Arti Mathanda. They discuss the upcoming book, the role of QA in modern teams and plenty more. Show notes: Learn more about Specflow: http://specflow.org/ Mentioned podcast with Emily Webber - https://cucumber.io/blog/2016/08/03/communities-of-practice Up for Grabs - http://up-for-grabs.net/#/ Specflow public courses in Europe - http://specflow.org/training/ Quality Excites - https://qualityexcites.pl/en/ CukenFest London, June - https://cucumber.io/events/cukenfest-london-2017

Cucumber Electron is a compelling alternative to Selenium. Cucumber-electron runs cucumber-js in Electron, a framework for building desktop applications in web technologies. By running features this way, your step definitions can require npm modules including server-side libraries and node.js core modules and use a browser DOM to render HTML, all in the same (chromium renderer) process, with no transpile step. This week on the podcast, we talk to its creator Josh Chisholm about this new project and testing through the GUI. Josh recently spent some time as a contractor building Cucumber Pro (https://cucumber.io/pro). Aslak Hellesoy, Julien Biezemans, Steve Tooke and Matt Wynne join the discussion. Announcing cucumber-electron - https://cucumber.io/blog/2017/01/23/announcing-cucumber-electron Get started - https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-electron Browser monkey - https://github.com/featurist/browser-monkey Vinehill, the virtual http adapter - https://github.com/featurist/vinehill Cucumbers on vine hill, a demo of all the stuff we discussed - https://github.com/joshski/cucumbers-on-vine-hill Say hi to Josh on Twitter - https://twitter.com/joshski Josh's company, Featurist - http://www.featurist.co.uk/ Recorded on January 20th 2017.

This month on the Cucumber podcast we speak to Llewellyn Falco. He's best known for two things: approval testing and mob programming. As we've covered mobbing in great detail on the pod lately, we dig into approval testing. A very informative and fun pod. From the Cucumber team on the podcast are Steve Tooke, Aslak Hellesoy, and Seb Rose. You say hello to Llewellyn on Twitter - https://twitter.com/LlewellynFalco Or read more: http://approvaltests.com/ http://llewellynfalco.blogspot.de/ Please share and subscribe to our podcast. It truly makes us happy. Say hello to us on Twitter https://twitter.com/cucumberbdd

This week on the Cucumber Podcast, Matt Wynne speaks to Sal Freudenberg about inclusive collaboration and neurodiversity. Show notes: More about the Neurodiversity campaign - http://leanagile.scot/workshops/inclusive-collaboration/ The inclusion collaboration experiments book - https://leanpub.com/theinclusivecollaborationexperiments http://www.lulu.com/shop/http://www.lulu.com/shop/sal-freudenberg-and-katherine-kirk/the-inclusive-collaboration-experiments/paperback/product-22927832.html Twitter https://twitter.com/inclusivecollab https://twitter.com/SalFreudenberg

This week we’re speaking to Loomio co-founder and Enspiral member, Richard Bartlett. In 2011, Richard found himself at the heart of the Occupy movement in Wellington, New Zealand. For the first couple of months, the camp was growing 20% per day, and no one was driving it. Although Occupy ultimately collapsed, Richard, along with some others from the movement, continued to explore how organisations and groups can self-organise at scale. We cover Richard’s own background and feed these ideas back into how software teams can spark change even in the largest companies. SHOW NOTES: Try out Loomio for distributed decision-making: https://www.loomio.org/ On twitter: https://twitter.com/richdecibels Enspiral tales - https://medium.com/enspiral-tales Enspiral handbook - https://handbook.enspiral.com/ Loomio handbook - https://loomio.coop/ Six Circles for Harmless Organisations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9ar0HVzNeE&feature=youtu.be

Can XP improve the experiences of women software developers? Clare Sudbery, a developer with 17 years experience in the industry, certainly thinks so. Clare has been involved in traditional waterfall projects and most recently XP. Earlier this year, she wrote an academic paper (http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-33515-5_24) about her own experiences in an XP team and how it impacted her. Clare feels many of the difficulties associated with being a minority have subsided since working in an XP environment. "My belief is that XP creates a more conducive environment for women and other minorities within the industry. I believe that XP can – and should – pave the way to making the tech industry a more welcoming and attractive place for women." In the podcast we discuss the ideas found in her paper and what progressive teams can do to improve their own working environment.

Today we’re going to be talking about communities of practice and how they can support learning in your company . Communities of Practice are “formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor” [1] In the organisations we work with, we encourage those with similar skill sets - testers for example - to get together with others in similar roles, who work in different departments. This wider pool of individuals can then support one another in their day-to-day work. It could therefore be said agile faces a paradox; we have all battled for smaller, cross-functional teams to improve communication and learning, but are we now losing out on the wider knowledge held in other departments? Communities of Practice is addressing this. To join us to discuss the subject we’ve invited Emily Webber, an independent agile and lean consultant, who has recently published her book “Building Successful Communities of Practice”. This week’s host, Matt Wynne, is also joined by our podcast regulars, Arti Mathanda and Seb Rose. You can find out more about Communities of Practice and Emily’s book on her website - http://emilywebber.co.uk/building-successful-communities-of-practice Let us know your own experiences and thoughts on twitter @cucumberbdd or in the comments below. You can also find this episode on iTunes - itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/cucumber-podcast-rss/id1078896635 [1] http://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/

On the podcast this week we discuss why diversity is important and what practical things we can do to increase it, specifically at our events. We also dive into our own experiences of being at conferences where diversity has either been very evident or completely absent, and give our reactions to that. For five years now we've been running a tech conference, born out of the BDD and Cucumber community. We call it CukeUp! and run it annually in London and Sydney. The event attracts a mix of different roles; from developers to business analysts, testers to product owners. And to be quite honest it has evolved so much we consider it more a progressive agile conference than anything else. In recent years we've made a conscious effort to increase the diversity of our events. Not just in terms of the content, but in our speaker line-up too. As organisers we are certain events which carry diverse views and opinions massively improves quality. This podcast will explore our own experiences building diverse communities; why it's important and what we can do better. This isn't just applicable to conference organising. If you are trying to build a community - either within your company or a side project - pick up ideas for making your project more welcoming and fun. Joining Matt Wynne on the podcast is Elise Aplin and Arti Mathanda, both help us curate our CukeUp! line-ups in Sydney and London respectively. CukeUp! AU is returning to Sydney this November. Learn more about our conference on our website - https://cucumber.io/events/cukeup-au-2016 The Call for Papers for CukeUp! AU is now open until August 5th 2016 - https://cucumber.typeform.com/to/cJHTsK

Cucumber’s popularity might give the impression it’s an easy tool to master. It ain’t! Many experienced Cucumber users have the bumps and bruises to prove it. Matt, Steve, and Aslak from the core Cucumber team discuss writing good gherkin and avoiding common pitfalls. We’ll unpick why it’s important to write your gherkin before you write the code, consider if you should ever delete scenarios, and give tips on incorporating your team’s different perspectives into maintainable, predictable cukes! You can subscribe via iTunes too. https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/cucumber-podcast-rss/id1078896635

“All the brilliant people working on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space, and on the same computer.” That’s how Woody Zuill - who coined the term Mob Programming - describes it. He is our esteemed guest on the podcast, and we spend some time digging into his own experiences mobbing. This is a fun episode for folks looking for novel ways to improve the certainty of their software. Remember to like, share and subscribe on soundcloud or iTunes. It helps us reach more people! Show notes: The first Mob Programming Conference is happening May 1 & 2 at the Microsoft NERD Center at MIT in Cambridge MA. - http://mobprogramming.org/mob-programming-conference-may-1-and-2-2016/. Mob Programming: A Whole Team Approach (Book, work in progress) - https://leanpub.com/mobprogramming We’re mobbing daily at Cucumber HQ and our host Steve Tooke put a post together at the end of last year - https://cucumber.io/blog/2015/12/21/the-mob-rules-ok

Drawing is a quick and graceful way to visualise your scenarios. When discussing complexity in our system, techniques which bring a voice to each stakeholder and break down user stories should be cherished. We first heard about these ideas through Ulrika Malmgren at CukeUp! London last year. We chatted with Ulrika Malmgren about drawing and other techniques to bring teams closer together to build certain, coherent software. Ulrika also tells us about her upcoming CukeUp! London talk, "Why Testers can be a Liability" happening next month. A talk with a contentious title is always a bonus. More information about CukeUp! can be found on the website - https://skillsmatter.com/conferences/7606-cukeup-2016#program Tooky had to step out at the last moment so Aslak takes hosting duties with Matt Wynne alongside. Show links: CukeUp! London 2016 (April 14th-15th) The final batch of tickets are going fast, book soon! - https://skillsmatter.com/conferences/7606-cukeup-2016 Example Mapping blog post - https://cucumber.io/blog/2015/12/08/example-mapping-introduction Illustrating Scenarios - https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/6228-illustrating-scenarios Online whiteboard, Limnu - https://limnu.com/ Toki Pona - http://tokipona.org/ Reinventing organisations, book http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/

Long before Behaviour-Driven Development was a term, John Smart was a proponent of bringing business and tech teams together. It was working for a French insurance company in the 90s, with complex (and peculiar) business rules, where the journey started: “This was a car insurance company so you had to tell them where you lived, what sort of car you had, what colour it was, what sort of dog you had...everything. The customer/product owner had these excel spreadsheets that he was using by himself to check the algorithms on the mainframe that we were supposed to be reproducing. So I said, maybe that could be useful - we can use those to drive our tests. What we ended up with was a set of unit tests being driven by an Excel spreadsheet...Ever since then, I’ve been looking for ways to write tests that express things at the business level. So when I came across BDD it all fell into place. “ This week on the Cucumber Podcast, Matt Wynne, Aslak Hellesøy and Steve Tooke talk with John Smart about BDD, his upcoming CukeUp! workshop, and how Serenity can help your team write higher quality automated tests. John Smart will be delivering a workshop at CukeUp! London on April 14th - skillsmatter.com/conferences/7606…eup-2016#program John was a speaker at CukeUp! in Sydney last November. His talk can be found here - cucumber.io/blog/2016/01/11/cuk…5-videos#john-smart You can find out more about Serenity on his website - www.thucydides.info/#/ Other speaking engagements - DevWeek London - devweek.com/speakers#john-smart - Gee Con - 2016.geecon.org/speakers/info.html?id=87 - London Tester Gathering - skillsmatter.com/conferences/7219…g-workshops-2016

The wide adoption of agile has produced practices and tools that help teams communicate and deliver software effectively. But many activities we assume we *must* use don't add the value we hoped. What happens when you throw out the rulebook and start at zero - will we see a marked improvement or just a Hobbesian mess? We've invited Marcin Floryan and Seb Lambla on the pod to talk about their recent anarchic experiments at Spotify. What did they throw away and what did they keep. SPOILER - The planning meeting is first to go. On the podcast: Marcin Floryan - https://twitter.com/mfloryan Seb Lambla - https://twitter.com/serialseb Matt Wynne - https://twitter.com/mattwynne Steve Tooke - https://twitter.com/tooky Subscribe and share your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter - https://twitter.com/cucumberbdd Watch their talk at Lean Agile Scotland from 2015 - http://leanagile.scot/sebastien-lambla-marcin-floryan-your-agile-is-dead/

In this episode we speak to Megan Folsom, a renegade product owner with sage advice for aspiring POs. We explore the conflicts and contradictions of the role, how the PO can bridge the communication gap between business and tech, and why courage trumps all. All this and more in this episode of the Cucumber podcast. On the podcast this week: Megan Folsom - twitter.com/mfolsom Steve Tooke - twitter.com/tooky Matt Wynne - twitter.com/mattwynne Aslak Hellesøy - twitter.com/aslak_hellesoy

Many large organisations find implementing agile processes tricky. After all, doesn't agile rely on self-organisation, devolved decision making, and flexibility? How can you keep hold of a sense of togetherness when you bring in process management and steering committees? In this podcast, we debate "scaling agile" and how large organisations can make it work. We're fortunate to have two experienced large-scale agile coaches in Em Campbell-Pretty and Terry Yin. They're joined by Cucumber regulars, Matt Wynne, Hamish Tedeschi and our host Steve Tooke. Today's guests delivered workshops at CukeUp! AU in Sydney on Nov 19th-20th. Find out more on our website - https://cucumber.io/events/cukeup-australia-2015