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Agile Glossary

Given – When – Then

What is Given – When – Then?

The Given-When-Then formula is a template intended to guide the writing of acceptance tests for a User Story:

  • (Given) some context
  • (When) some action is carried out
  • (Then) a particular set of observable consequences should obtain

An example:

  • Given my bank account is in credit, and I made no withdrawals recently,
  • When I attempt to withdraw an amount less than my card’s limit,
  • Then the withdrawal should be complete without errors or warnings

Tools such as JBehave, RSpec, or Cucumber encourage the use of this template, though it can also be used purely as a heuristic irrespective of any tool.

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Additional Agile Glossary Terms

User Stories

In consultation with the customer or product owner, the team divides up the work to be done into functional increments called "user stories."
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Integration

"Integration" (or "integrating") refers to any efforts still required for a project team to deliver a product suitable for release as a functional whole.
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INVEST

The acronym INVEST stands for a set of criteria used to assess the quality of a user story. If the story fails to meet one of these criteria, the team may want to reword it.
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Team

A "team" in the Agile sense is a small group of people, assigned to the same project or effort, nearly all of them on a full-time basis.
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