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See how operational definitions bring clarity to requirements and support earlier testing

An operational definition explains what a concept means in practical, measurable terms. It makes abstract or vague ideas concrete so that people are more likely to understand them in the same way and test them consistently. W. Edwards Deming wrote that "an operational definition puts communicable meaning into a concept. Adjectives like good, reliable, uniform, round, tired, safe, unsafe, unemployed have ot communicable meaning until they are expressed in operational terms of sampling, test and criterion." Out of the Crisis, (1986, chapter 9) Deming gave this example of an operational definition: “A specification test of a piece of metal or an assembly A criterion (or criteria) for judgement Decision: yes or no, the object or the material did or did not meet the criterion (or criteria)” Another example of operational definition would be: A specification, for example: As a Gmail user I want to log in to my Gmail account So that I can check my email Criteria, for example: Acceptance criteria I can see emails sent to my Gmail address A decision as to whether what is being tested meets the criteria, for example:The definition of "done" includes that all acceptance criteria will be tested

Gherkin is a domain-specific language (DSL) used primarily in behaviour-driven development (BDD) to define test cases in a human-readable format. It's the language that Cucumber, a popular BDD tool, uses to specify the behaviour of software systems. Gherkin's syntax is designed to be easily understood by both technical and non-technical team members, promoting collaboration and clear communication about requirements. The Cucumber Book by Matt Wynne and Aslak Hellesøy (2012, p7), says that Gherkin is a list of steps for a Cucumber test to work through, and so are the criteria used to test the work. Example: Feature: User Login Scenario: Successful Login Given the user is on the login page When the user enters valid credentials Then the user should be logged in