Practice 4 – Use business language for acceptance tests

Use business-facing language for acceptance tests to improve mutual communication and a common understanding of the requirements. Work closely with the product owner to create what Eric Evan called the ubiquitous language, a common dialect between the business and technology. Misunderstandings are the root cause of most project failures:

• Create a common language and use it inside the project.
• Use an acceptance testing framework, such as Cucumber or FitNesse, to help the business team understand and get them involved.
• Express business values inside acceptance tests, and don't forget about them during development. It's easy to spend too much time on unrelated topics!
• Improve and maintain acceptance tests so that they always act as regression tests.
• Make sure everyone is aware that a passing acceptance test suite means a green light from the business to release the software...