Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2005 Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Fitnesse and.NET Achieving Customer Zen With Fitnesse

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Overview The problem with customers… Figuring out what customers want Executable Specifications How Fitnesse can help Fitnesse Demos Wrap-up

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 The Customer Problem If we don’t take care of the customers, maybe they’ll stop bugging us

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 The Customer Problem Customers aren’t developers Developers aren’t (usually) customers Customers don’t know what they want until they see it

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 What Customers Want How do we show customers what they want? –In a way they can understand –In a way that elicits immediate feedback –In a way that allows them to explore –Without building entire system

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 What Customers Want Mock-Ups –Screen grabs –Sketches on paper or whiteboard –Visio Diagrams –Good for initial discussions –Allows customer to explore in some fashion –Hard to keep up with the latest state of the system

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 What Customers Want Prototyping –Make a throw away version –Allows customer interaction at a more concrete level –More expensive than mock-ups –Customers may not understand difference between prototype and real system –May be hard to keep up with the real system

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 What Customers Want Frequent Releases –Shows customer what is finished –Shows customer the current state of the system –Hard for customer to explore with –Customer has to wait for release to play with new version –Customer can only explore GUI elements

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 What Customers Want Need something between prototype and actual release Ties domain concepts to code Proves when feature is done – in a repeatable fashion Customer-centric and developer friendly Ties as closely as possible to the real system

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Executable Specifications A way of modeling specifications in a way that allows them to be executed to prove the system meets the spec Abstract State Model –Any algorithm can be modeled at its natural abstraction level by an appropriate ASM –By being able to run the model, you can validate the algorithm

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Executable Specifications The appropriate abstraction level for business problems is usually a business (or domain) specific language By allowing the domain language to be executable, users get fast feedback Domain concepts can be translated directly into code

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 How Fitnesse Helps Which is clearer? This? [Test] public void CreateRoomAddsRoomToRoomList() { Assert.AreEqual(0, chatApp.AvailableRooms.Count); chatApp.CreateRoom(“aRoom”, “aUser”); Assert.AreEqual(1, chatApp.AvailableRooms.Count); Room room = chatApp.AvailableRooms.GetRoomByName(“aRoom”); Assert.AreEqual(1, room.UserCount); Assert.IsTrue(room.Users.Contains(“aUser”)); }

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 How Fitnesse Helps Or this? user enters username ofJohn user enters room name ofBasketball user pressesCreate list of rooms room nameuser countuser list Basketball1John

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 How Fitnesse Helps So what is this magical Fitnesse? –Two pieces FIT (Framework for Integration Tests) Fitnesse –Allows specifications to be written in HTML, Excel or Wiki format –Can use any language underneath (runners for.NET, Java, Python, Ruby and others)

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 How Fitnesse Helps Fitnesse –Uses Wiki format –Allows collaborative efforts between customers and developers –Is about communication first, testing second –Easy to use syntax –Straightforward to hook to the system being tested

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 How Fitnesse Helps Different Types of Tables –ColumnFixture –RowFixture –DoFixture –ActionFixture –Custom Fixtures –Many others

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 How Fitnesse Helps Helps solve 3 major problems –Communication –Agility –Balance Side effect benefits –Regression tests –Domain concepts exposed

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Chat Application Demo Chat Application –Customer wants a simple chat application where users can create rooms and join existing ones –Specifications are being captured into Fitnesse fixtures and hooked to the system under test

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Chat Application Demo Specification Example ChatTests.Application startChatTests.Application list of rooms room nameuser countuser list user enters username ofJohn user enters room name ofBasketball user pressesCreate list of rooms room nameuser countuser list Basketball1John

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Chat Application Demo Customer found a hole in the specification by writing Fitnesse tests When the last user leaves, the room should be deleted

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Chat Application Demo Because the domain concepts are translated into code, the developers can quickly write the corresponding unit test

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Chat Application Demo And then get the unit test to pass by writing the code

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Chat Application Demo And because Fitnesse ties into the system under test, we can see our change meets the specification immediately

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Business Rules Demo The table based nature of Fitnesse is excellent for communicating Business Rules If you can capture the concepts in a table form, you can write it in Fitnesse

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Business Rules Demo Business Holidays –Different businesses have different days which they may count as holidays –Interfacing with them may mean having to know what holiday applies to what business –Sounds like a good Fitnesse test!

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Business Rules Demo Fitnesse Test and Code

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Business Rules Demo Shipping Charges –Online store with shopping cart –Shipping Charges are based on order amounts –Customers get free shipping if they are over a set amount, or if they have preferred customer status

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Business Rules Demo We want an initial user list we can reuse throughout our tests

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Business Rules Demo Our other fixtures can now make use of our setup code

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Wrap-up Focus on using Fitnesse to communicate with your customers first Then use Fitnesse as a regression testing tool Having Fitnesse tests shouldn’t be an excuse not to write unit tests

Achieving Customer Zen with Fitnesse and.NET Cory Foy St. Louis Code Camp May 6 th, 2006 Wrap-up Fitnesse Resources –Fit for Developing Software by Rick Mugridge and Ward Cunningham –Fitnesse website ( –Fitnesse mailing list ( –Fitnesse tutorials (