Why BDD Often Doesn’t Make Sense Today. Not Because It Was Wrong — But Because the World Changed
BDD didn’t start as a bad idea.
In fact, it started as a reaction to something that was working — Test-Driven Development (TDD) — and an honest attempt to make it more inclusive.
The problem is that while tools and processes evolved, people’s day-to-day realities changed even faster.
Today, BDD often survives as syntax and tooling, while its original purpose quietly disappears.
Let’s walk through how that happened.
It Started With TDD (And a Real Problem)
TDD was built for developers.
The loop was simple:
Red → Write a failing test
Green → Make it pass
Refactor → Improve design
And in code, it looked like this:
@Test
void total_price_includes_tax() {
Order order = new Order(100);
assertEquals(118, order.totalPrice());
}
TDD worked well for:
- Clarifying behavior
- Driving design
- Giving fast feedback
But it had a blind spot.
The tests made sense to developers — not always to everyone else.
Product managers, business stakeholders, and sometimes even testers struggled to map unit-level tests to business intent.
That gap was real.
BDD Was an Attempt to Bridge That Gap
BDD emerged as a layer above TDD, not a replacement. The idea was simple and genuinely well-intentioned:
“What if we describe behavior in business language first, and then drive the code from that?”
So instead of starting with a unit test, teams would start with a shared example:
Given a user with items in the cart
When they place an order
Then the total price includes tax
This was supposed to:
- Encourage conversation
- Align product, QA, and engineering
- Create shared understanding before code
The Given / When / Then format wasn’t the goal. It was just a conversation scaffold.
Then Reality Kicked In: Everyone Got Busy
This is where modern teams diverged from the original BDD dream.
Today’s roles look very different.
Developers
- Shipping features
- Managing CI failures
- Handling production issues
- Optimizing performance and cost
QA / Test Engineers
- Building automation frameworks
- Managing flaky tests
- Supporting releases
- Acting as quality owners across teams
Product Managers
- Roadmaps
- Stakeholder syncs
- Data analysis
- Constant prioritization pressure
Everyone is busy. Everyone is optimizing for their own feedback loops.
And that changed how BDD was practiced.
What BDD Slowly Turned Into
Instead of collaborative design, BDD often became:
- A Documentation Task
Someone (usually QA) writes scenarios like:
Scenario: Successful order placement
Given the user is logged in
And the cart has items
When the user places an order
Then the order is created successfully
It looks collaborative.
But often:
- Developers see it after implementation
- Product signs off asynchronously
- Conversation already happened elsewhere (Slack, Jira, meetings)
The scenario becomes a record, not a driver.
- Another Automation Layer
BDD scenarios then get automated:
@When("the user places an order")
public void placeOrder() {
orderApi.placeOrder();
}
@Then("the order is created successfully")
public void verifyOrder() {
assertEquals(201, response.getStatusCode());
}
Now teams are maintaining:
- Feature files
- Step definitions
- API/UI automation
- Assertions elsewhere
That’s a lot of area for something that was supposed to simplify understanding.
- Ownership Quietly Moved to QA
One of the biggest intent losses:
BDD was meant to be shared ownership.
In reality, many teams ended up with:
- QA owning scenarios
- Developers owning code
- Product owning acceptance
BDD became a translation layer, not a collaboration layer.
The Tooling Made This Easier (Not Better)
Frameworks like Cucumber made BDD approachable — but also easier to misunderstand.
They optimized for:
- Writing scenarios
- Reusing steps
- Generating reports
They couldn’t enforce:
- Real-time collaboration
- Shared thinking
- Early design conversations
So teams focused on what tools could measure — passing scenarios — instead of what BDD originally cared about — shared understanding.
Meanwhile, Teams Solved the Same Problem Differently
Modern teams often achieve BDD’s original goals without BDD:
- Example-driven discussions in grooming
- API contracts and schemas
- Lightweight design docs
- Fast unit and API tests
Strong observability in production
A simple API test today often communicates intent more clearly than a feature file:
@Test
void order_total_includes_tax() {
OrderResponse response = orderClient.createOrder(validOrder());
assertThat(response.total()).isEqualTo(118);
}
Clear. Executable. Owned by the team that writes the code.
The Core Issue: Syntax Replaced Conversation
BDD quietly assumed:
If we encode behavior in a shared format, alignment will follow.
But alignment doesn’t come from syntax.
It comes from:
- Talking early
- Owning decisions
- Revisiting assumptions
- Tight feedback loops
When those exist, BDD is often unnecessary.
When they don’t, BDD tooling doesn’t fix the gap.
Where BDD Can Still Make Sense
BDD can still work when:
- The domain language is truly non-technical
- Product, QA, and devs actively co-author scenarios
- Scenarios are few, stable, and high-level
- Automation is secondary to conversation
That level of discipline is rare — not because teams are bad, but because modern delivery pressure is real.
TDD was about designing code through tests. BDD was an attempt to design behavior through conversation.
Both ideas were solid.
But today:
- People are overloaded
- Feedback loops are faster
- Systems are more observable
- Communication happens continuously, not ceremonially
BDD didn’t fail.
Its assumptions stopped matching reality.
If BDD feels heavy, performative, or disconnected on your team, it’s worth asking:
Are we preserving intent — or just preserving a process?
Very often, letting go of BDD isn’t a step backward. It’s a step back to clarity.
This is a critique of modern BDD practice, not the original idea.
Strong teams often achieve BDD’s goals without BDD.
Tools can support collaboration — they can’t replace it.