Managing agile project requirements with storytest-driven development

Agile project teams aim to include both business and development personnel, emphasizing direct communication over written requirements documents. Rather than trying to understand all of a system's detailed requirements before development, they carry out high-level release planning and then drive small development increments in cycles of one or two weeks. Doing so avoids many of the potential problems in traditional, phased software development approaches and accepts that changes are inevitable. Storytest-driven development brings requirements and automated testing ideas and practices together to support this agile process. The author describes this development approach and how its concrete examples can clarify and communicate business rules, aid agile team discussions, and facilitate team members' understanding of the concepts at the heart of the business needs. Such examples are executable, serving a secondary role as automated tests. © 2008 IEEE.