Dave Haeffner and I are proud to announce a new workshop on Acceptance Test Driven Development using Cucumber and Ruby that we are offering in 2012.  The workshop will initially be taught as private courses to companies, so if you are interested in a quote, please contact me at Arin@AgilityFeat.com or 434.996.5226.

ATDD Kick-Start with Cucumber and Ruby

This two-day workshop will take participants through the entire life cycle of automating your acceptance tests using Cucumber and Ruby.  The workshop is designed for people who are new to test automation and new to the Ruby language.  This course serves as an excellent introduction to both concepts, and is suitable for testers and developers alike.  Each attendee will work in pairs on actual tests and code throughout the two days, so that learning is maximized through hands on practice.

Workshop Topics

  • Overview of Test Driven Development, ATDD, and BDD
  • Intro to Cucumber
  • Writing Gherkin Acceptance Criteria
  • Step Definition basics
  • Intro to Ruby
  • Writing your step definitions in Ruby
  • Using RSpec to test assumptions
  • Automating website testing
  • Using Rails to build our website
  • Testing things besides websites
  • Refactoring Cucumber tests
  • Continuous Integration basics
  • Review of TDD/BDD concepts
  • Overview of other BDD implementations

Prerequisites

Participants need to bring their own laptops.  VMWare virtual images will be distributed ahead of time to attendees so they can have a working environment quickly.  These images will have open source copies of Cucumber and Ruby pre-installed on a Ubuntu Linux desktop.  No experience with Ruby, Cucumber, or Linux is required prior to the course.

About your instructors

Arin Sime is an agile coach, developer, and the founder of AgilityFeat.  Based in Virginia, he has worked with teams at small startups, large corporations, and government agencies.  He has been a speaker at Agile 2009, Agile 2010, XP2011, as well as other regional conferences.  He brings his diverse background of technical and management experience to bear when coaching teams through process and engineering challenges.

Dave Haeffner is the founder of Arrgyle — a company focused on helping people realize and achieve their potential through effective technology use. Before starting Arrgyle he was the Senior Quality Assurance Analyst at The Motley Fool; responsible for creating, implementing, and overseeing their automated web testing infrastructure. He was a speaker at Agile 2010 and is an active member in the Selenium and Ruby communities.

Arin and Dave both hold an M.S. in Management of I.T. from the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce.