New · Specialised Track

BDD, Gherkin & Three Amigos for NZ teams

The NZ-localised guide to building the right thing, because the team agreed what it was first.

Most defects are not coding mistakes. They are misunderstandings — a story that meant one thing to the business analyst, another to the developer, and a third to the tester. Behaviour-Driven Development fixes that before any code is written. The team turns a vague story into concrete examples, agrees on them together, and writes those examples as Gherkin scenarios that double as tests and as living documentation. This track teaches the conversation and the craft.

Start with Lesson 1 → Back to Specialised

This track covers

Shift-Left & SBE The Three Amigos Given / When / Then Scenario Outlines Gherkin Anti-Patterns Living Documentation

What BDD, SBE & Three Amigos are

BDD is a way of building software around agreed behaviour. Specification by Example (SBE) is the practice of pinning that behaviour down with concrete examples instead of abstract rules. The Three Amigos is the short session — a business voice, a development voice, and a testing voice — where those examples get agreed before code is written.

Who this is for

Testers, BAs, and developers in NZ agile teams who want to stop finding requirement gaps in UAT. Assumes ISTQB Foundation Level or equivalent. No tooling background needed — the craft is taught from first principles, with NZ examples throughout.

The 2 lessons

From the conversation to the scenario

Lesson 1

Three Amigos & Specification by Example

Shift-left in practice. How a Three Amigos session turns an ambiguous NZ user story into shared, concrete examples before any code is cut — and why agreement, not documentation, is the real output.

~30 min read · ~70 min with exercises · BDD

Lesson 2

Writing Good Gherkin

Given/When/Then that reads like a sentence. Scenario outlines and backgrounds. Declarative versus imperative steps, the common anti-patterns, and Gherkin as living documentation the whole team can read.

~30 min read · ~75 min with exercises · BDD

Why this track

The cheapest defect to fix is the one you never build

A requirement gap caught in a conversation costs minutes. The same gap caught in UAT costs a rebuild, a re-test, and a delayed release. The same gap shipped to production costs a customer. BDD moves the catching as far left as it can go — into a short session before the work starts — because that is where it is cheapest. The point is not the tooling. It is the agreement.

Consider a RealMe identity-verification story, or a KiwiSaver contribution change at a provider, or a rates-rebate application at Auckland Council. Each one sounds simple until three people in a room ask “what about a contractor with no fixed income?” or “what happens at exactly the threshold?” Those questions surface the edge cases that vague stories hide. BDD makes asking them routine, and turns the answers into concrete examples everyone signs up to.

This track teaches both halves. Lesson 1 is the conversation — how to run a Three Amigos session and use Specification by Example to replace a fuzzy story with agreed examples. Lesson 2 is the craft — how to write those examples as Gherkin that is precise enough to automate and plain enough that a business owner can read it. Done well, the result is a single artefact that is the requirement, the test, and the documentation at once.

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