OKCJUG Review: Build the Right System with Test Driven Requirements 
Yesterday I enjoyed participating in the January
OKC Java Users Group meeting. The presentation was delivered by
Rod Coffin and
Don McGreal. Their topic was on test driven requirements and lean
pull applied to software development.
The question, which no doubt resonates with most professional software developers, was posed:
How can we as software professionals and craftsmen know that we are producing the most valuable system at just the right time for our users?
Rod and Don aimed to answer with:
The concept of "pull" from lean manufacturing, in combination with agile values and practices, provides a powerful guide for how we can improve our profession by allowing the incremental specification of functionality to "pull" the creation of working software.
The presentation was excellent, I think this material should be taught to all involved with creating software solutions. Don clearly explained the value proposition of Lean in the traditional terms of manufacturing and then he and Rod quickly transposed
Lean principles to software development. After a foundational crash course in Lean, Rod and Don paired on a working demonstration of the concepts.
Role playing as a product owner, Don expressed some business needs and Rod made the promise to deliver. They then worked through creating a user story, followed by acceptance criteria (using
green pepper), coding the spec (unit test), and making it turn from red to green.
Mingled throughout the primary theme of applying lean pull via test driven requirements, they managed to also demonstrate some
behavior-driven development (BDD) techniques and an agile
pair-programming game.
All in all it was really well done. The slide show reminded me of something Steve Jobs might use, limited verbiage, very to the point and excellent transition flare (it was on a MacBook Pro using Keynote).
