This discussion group is for discussions related to advances in functional testing tools for Agile projects.

Automated functional testing is an integral and essential part of Agile development. Many Agile teams use functional tests to codify the system requirements. Some also practice Acceptance Test Driven Development.

Agile teams have particular needs for automated tools that are not well served by traditional record-and-playback GUI drivers. As requirements specifications, functional tests must be readable: clear, succinct, and expressed in the language of the business domain. As an automated safety net, the tests must be maintainable: built with reusable domain specific testing language components, easy to change as the requirements change.

The good news is that tool support for automated functional tests has grown significantly in recent years. There is a large variety of commercial and open source testing tools/frameworks available that support Agile development practices. The FIT framework was a significant boost to the state of the art of automated functional testing, both in terms of the syntax of the specification (tables), the detailed test execution feedback (cell by cell), and the development/execution environment (desktop tools rather than development or specialized tools).

However, we believe that it’s time for another significant boost to the state of the art. We'll discuss those advances here.