The Human Flaw That's Ruining Your Software Specifications

Gojko Adzic breaks down the dangerous delusion surrounding behaviour driven development (BDD). Many software engineering teams treat BDD scenarios as final requirements that can simply be delegated to a developer to write and execute. This is a massive mistake. Using a real-world programming example of an edge case that baffled a digital platform’s sales director and engineering team, Gojko explains the psychological human flaw at the heart of bad code: human beings are terrible at explaining what they want upfront, but they are great at complaining about concrete examples. If you want to excel at modern software engineering, software testing, and agile software development, you must learn to stop at the "happy path" and start organizing "good fights" over boundaries. 💡 What You Will Learn in This Video: The BDD Delusion: Why "Given-When-Then" scenarios are NOT requirements, but tools for uncovering hidden assumptions. The USE Algorithm: A step-by-step framework to transition from Usual examples to Structure, and ultimately uncover critical Edge cases faster. Feedback Exercises: How to use silent, individual sticky notes or chats to measure shared understanding and expose developer blind spots without groupthink. - 🎓 LEARN & HARNESS THE POWER OF ATDD: We believe ATDD is the future of programming, and especially the key to getting reliable, production-ready code out of AI. Find out more about the course here 👉 https://courses.cd.training/pages/acc... Dave Farley's "Acceptance Testing: BDD From Stories to Executable Specifications" course teaches you exactly how to: • Write Acceptance Tests that act as precise AI prompts • Build a DSL-driven feedback loop that keeps AI code on track • Replace guesswork with executable specifications This is the missing layer between 'vibe coding' and software that actually works. We also have courses tailored for Product Owners, BAs, QAs, and business leaders pick the one that fits your role. Get started NOW 👉 https://courses.cd.training/pages/acc... - Gojko on X ➡️ https://x.com/gojkoadzic Gojko on LinkedIn ➡️   / gojko   Modern Software Engineering on X ➡️ https://x.com/ModernSoftwareX Modern Software Engineering on LinkedIn ➡️   / modern-software-engineering   Modern Software Engineering on bluesky ➡️ https://bsky.app/profile/modernswe.bs... - ⭐ PATREON: Join the Continuous Delivery community and access extra perks & content! ➡️ https://bit.ly/ContinuousDeliveryPatreon 🎥 Join Us On TikTok ➡️   / modern.s.engineering   - 👕 T-SHIRTS: A fan of the T-shirts I wear in my videos? Grab your own, at reduced prices EXCLUSIVE TO CONTINUOUS DELIVERY FOLLOWERS! Get money off the already reasonably priced t-shirts! 🔗 Check out their collection HERE: ➡️ https://bit.ly/3Uby9iA 🚨 DON'T FORGET TO USE THIS DISCOUNT CODE: ContinuousDelivery - CHANNEL SPONSORS: Octopus Deploy sets the standard for Continuous Delivery (CD), empowering software teams to deliver value in an agile way. Globally, more than 4,000 organizations rely on its Continuous Delivery, GitOps, and release orchestration solutions to deliver swift value to their customers. Octopus efficiently orchestrates software delivery across multi-cloud, Kubernetes, data centers, and hybrid environments, whether containerized modern apps or heritage applications. With governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) at its core, Octopus supports Platform Engineering teams in their mission to provide a superior developer experience (DevEx). Octopus also actively contributes to the developer community with open-source projects. ➡️ https://bit.ly/MSExOCTDEP Equal Experts is a product software development consultancy with a network of over 1,000 experienced technology consultants globally. They increase the pace of innovation by using modern software engineering practices that embrace Continuous Delivery, Security, and Operability from the outset ➡️ https://bit.ly/3ASy8n0 TransFICC provides low-latency connectivity, automated trading workflows and e-trading systems for Fixed Income and Derivatives. TransFICC resolves the issue of market fragmentation by providing banks and asset managers with a unified low-latency, robust and scalable API, which provides connectivity to multiple trading venues while supporting numerous complex workflows across asset classes such as Rates and Credit Bonds, Repos, Mortgage-Backed Securities and Interest Rate Swaps ➡️ https://transficc.com - #softwareengineering #softwaredevelopment #agile