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Journey to scenarios

What it would do

Section titled “What it would do”

Take the output of an example mapping session — the story, the rules, the green cards and the state cards — and emit:

  • a Gherkin feature file, one Rule: per blue card and one Example: per green card, carrying the same values that were written on the wall;
  • a journey test skeleton per scenario, selecting by accessible role and name;
  • a coverage report back onto the map: which rules have scenarios, which have none, and which state cards have neither a story nor a scenario.

Why the values matter

Section titled “Why the values matter”

The translation must not paraphrase. A green card that says a basket of 50.00 CHF becomes a scenario containing 50.00 CHF, not “a basket with some items”.

That is the whole reason the session produces cards with concrete values: the values are the specification, and every retyping is an opportunity for them to become vaguer. “Then the discount is applied correctly” is what a paraphrase produces, and correctly carries nothing anyone can check.

What it must not decide

Section titled “What it must not decide”

Whether the scenario is right. The map is the agreement; this produces a draft of its executable form, and a person confirms it says what the room meant.

What is missing from the map. It can report that a rule has no examples — that is arithmetic. It must not invent the missing examples, because an example nobody in the room agreed to is a requirement that entered the system without a decision.

That is the failure mode to guard against hardest here. A generated scenario looks exactly like an agreed one.

The coverage report

Section titled “The coverage report”

The most valuable output, and the least obvious. Pointed back at the map, it answers questions the room cannot hold in its head:

Report Means
A rule with no scenario Either the rule is untestable as written, or it was forgotten
A state card with no story and no scenario A state that will ship undesigned and unchecked
A scenario with no rule Something is being tested that nobody agreed to
A red card still open The story should not have been estimated

Where it connects

Section titled “Where it connects”