There’s been a batch of questions on StackOverflow recently on the SpecFlow questions feed that follow a similar pattern.

• Specflow – How to move back to a previos step
• How to run gherkin scenario multiple times
• How to pass Command line argument to specflow test scenario
• How to manage global variables in Spec Flow

All these questions have one thing in common, they are definitely not using BDD. I’m not sure what they are doing, in one case, SpecFlow is used to set up a test run and gather performance data, but there is never a comparison or an assertion. I’d struggle to even call it testing as the test must be performed manually by looking at the data.

But all this is a micro level abstraction of a bigger problem, which it looks like Liz Keogh is feeling at the moment. Her latest post Behaviour Driven Development – Shallow and Deep definitely indicates that this phenomenon is not just isolated to technical individuals trying out new ways of doing things and getting it wrong, but that those habits seem to then pass on to the organisations that they work for.

I love the way that Liz talks about this problem in the context of having a conversation with somebody else. In fact I might just go for a little chat myself.