[Boulder-Denver Ruby Group] Bob Cotton "Behavior Driven Development", Monday 4/30

[Alex Viggio]

FYI, Bob's talk will include coverage of rSpec, the Ruby framework for 
Behavior Driven Development.

- Alex

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A friendly reminder that this coming Monday, April 30th, Agile Denver 
will host guest speaker Bob Cotton. Bob will present on "Behavior Driven 
Development: An Evolution in Testing". The meeting will be held at the 
PPA Event Center near Downtown Denver. The doors will open at 6:00pm for 
networking and refreshments.

Behavior Driven Development (BDD) is not a revolution in testing, but an
evolution in how developers think about program design. BDD was born
from the idea that most developers were not realizing the full potential
from Test Driven Development (TDD). Many people have said that TDD is
not about testing but about design. However, the language of "testing"
impedes the novice from using TDD as a design tool.

The rSpec project is an implementation of BDD in Ruby. Taking advantage
of the language's flexibility, rSpec gives the developer a rich language
in which to express behavior, from the unit level up to story
acceptance. rSpec is a unit testing framework that tries to focus the
developer on defining the behavior of classes instead of testing private
methods and internal state. rSpec also includes a mock objects
framework.

In this talk Bob Cotton, test architect at Rally Software, will:

* Discuss the language of testing and how it impedes developers from
reaching the real benefits of TDD.

* Cover rSpec, the Ruby framework for BDD.

* Show how Rally has leveraged these concepts for the definition of
acceptance tests.


AGENDA:

6:00 - 6:30 PM  Refreshments, networking and announcements

6:30 - 8:00 PM  Bob Cotton presentation


SPEAKER

With over 12 years of developing and testing web applications, Bob has
extensive experience testing applications using open source testing
tools. From unit, load, functional and GUI testing Bob has applied many
tools and techniques to testing large scale, SaaS (Software as a
Service) applications. Most recently at Rally Software Development
(www.rallydev.com), Bob has helped shape an Agile software methodology
by including unique approaches to software test automation.

Automated testing, using tools such as FitNesse and Selenium, are
integrated into the development process from the beginning of each
iteration. Prior to joining Rally, Bob worked as the System Architect at
SynXis Corp, where he helped build and test a high-volume (multi-million
messages a day) hotel reservation system.

Bob holds a B.S. in computer science from George Mason University.


SPONSOR

The April 2007 meeting is sponsored by Rally Software.

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 From an initial pilot project to enterprise rollout, Rally helps
companies succeed with Agile software development. Rally's family of
Agile life cycle management products give teams the visibility and
collaboration needed to deliver high-value software in rapid iterations,
and its world-renowned coaching services help mentor teams to create
internal Agile experts. Based in Boulder, Colo., Rally maps an
incremental road to Agile adoption for thousands of subscribers from
leading software vendors, Internet companies and corporate development
teams.

For more information, visit www.rallydev.com.

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DIRECTIONS

We will be meeting at the PPA Event Center near downtown Denver. The
Event Center address is 2105 Decatur Street, Denver, Colorado 80211.
Parking is free and their is a nearby bus stop that is a 10 minute bus
ride from downtown. For directions see the MapQuest link or the PPA site
below, or call (303) 433-8247 for additional details.

http://tinyurl.com/2ntynq (map)

http://www.dppa.com/EventCenter/Directions.htm


. A G I L E D E N V E R .

http://www.agiledenver.org