The 5 Best BDD Gherkin Tips That Nobody Told You

Discover five essential secrets that can transform your BDD writing and lead to greater success.

David Rodenas PhD
8 min readNov 5, 2022
Struggling with BDD Writing? These Tips Will Make It a Breeze.

BDD has risen in popularity over the years as a de facto standard in software development, and many companies are using it. Unfortunately, that does not mean that our practices have matured; instead, we are falling into the same repetitive failures. To illustrate this point, you can read the comment of Thomas Lunsford in a previous article:

Our company has a QA department who has written thousands of what they call BDD tests. They’re damn near worthless because they are not really BDD tests but a spaghetti of steam of consciousness steps by user roles.
Thomas Lunsford

This article aims to go beyond the usual, and present five things that are not often considered or taught, but are essential when working with BDD and Gherkins.

Secret 1. Think in Examples, not in Scenarios

Gherkin writing traditionally began with the use of the word “Scenario” to describe each behavior. However, it was later realized that this word did not effectively convey its intended meaning, leading to the addition of the synonymous term “Example.” Nowadays, the official documentation, primarily uses

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David Rodenas PhD

Passionate software engineer & storyteller. Sharing knowledge to advance our skills. Join me on a journey of discovery in the world of software engineering.