Why BDD Editor?

There are so many agile project management tools, why do we need yet another one? Fair point.

We really like Trello, and who does not? What we always wished for was Trello with an Agile tool box. Zero configuration, no workflows, no activity streams, no bloat - just slick and fast interface with the few key things to make life easier.

Turns out that just does not exists - until now.

Getting Started

Using bddeditor to manage your software development process is an intuitive thing, and although being familiar with agile development helps - it is not required.

By following these instructions you should be in good place to make the most of using our tool.

If you do struggle - please contact us, we'd love your feedback and are constantly trying to improve. We are here to help - our goal is to provide the tool so you can concentrate on whats really important - building YOUR software!

Creating Stories

Creating a user story in bddeditor is a simple process. You will only need to fill in the story title to save a story but we suggest you fill in the complete details section in your story. This will not require much more work but forces you to think at the end user of this story. Who is it for? What is it exactly that hey need? And, why is it needed?

Using this template will ultimately help you building the software what the customer wants.

Simply key in the fields and press save.

Once the story is created, you can view and edit it in the BACKLOG VIEW. Backlog is simply list of stories outstanding. Once a story is finished it is no longer visible in the backlog.

In the backlog view, you can click the title of the story to open the story editor. Also in this view you can see the key properties of the story, such as status, who is it assigned to, priority and is this story part of the MVP (Minimal Viable Product).

Story Lifecycle

In story editing window, you can refine your story. For example add tasks need to be carried out for story to be successfully completed. The life cycle of the story is:

New - Inception of the Story
To Do - Selected to be worked at
In Progress - Story being actively worked on
Done - Story is finished
Archived - Story is no longer visible in backlog or topics

There couple of key attributes that are useful for your process, firstly you can mark a Story as MVP - this will help you to focus your backlog management to prioritise based on what is really needed. Secondly, you can colour code your stories, this give you a quick visual way to categorise stories, this colour coding as visible in all views (backlog, board, topic and tags).

If you want to see a timeline of historical status changes for the story, you can see this by clicking the calendar icon next to the status selection.

Managing Your Work with 'The Board'

Although you can change the status of your story by editing the status value in the story editor, the most intuitive way of doing this is by dragging the story to appropriate column in the BOARD VIEW.

The board view gives you a highly focussed view on what stories are currently being worked at. Once the stories is finished - after review, simply click ARCHIVE DONE STORIES button and the story is archived.

Note that you can always edit the story by clicking the story title inside the story card.

Managing Backlog

Backlog is just another way of saying what you still have to do to get where you want to be. In the BACKLOG VIEW you can

Prioritise your work, i.e. mark stories you want to work on first
Estimate amount of days it will take to get your work done (points or velocity)
Quickly glance who owns the story, is it being worked at or is it a MVP
Search for stories based on tags, story ids and titles

Validating Story Outcomes with Behaviour Scenarios

When creating or refining the story you should consider scenarios or examples on how the user would end up using the function created by this story. This specification by example process will provide central consensus on what the story is about. These scenarios can then further be used for automating the testing of the story.

To create new behaviour scenario - click the + ADD NEW SCENARIO button on the story editor.

bddeditor uses the Given-When-Then format for scenarios. Once the scenario has been created you can:

Download the Gherkin format feature file
Download selection of scenarios based on tags, status or story id for your CI/CD test execution

Story Mapping with Topic Map

Story mapping is incredibly powerful tool for planning your product and work. In bddeditor we use the term Topic to group stories in different topics. Topic could be product centric (e.g. Login) or it could be work centric (e.g. Release 2) - or mix of both.

By using Topic Map you can quickly glance the progress by Topic. You can also easily add and move stories between topics which is a good way to initiate a project or when doing major replanning (instead of using the backlog view).

Documenting Your Project

With our WYSIWYG editor similar to LinkedIn or Medium, documenting your project is a breeze!