Test Persona: a pattern for acceptance tests

Test Persona is a software pattern for acceptance tests. The use of this pattern leads to a de-coupling of test motivation from test implementation. Using test personas in acceptance tests is part of building a rich test domain. This pattern is complementary to other patterns that focus on the test domain, such as the page object pattern.

Concept

A test persona has knowledge of the actions and information available to a particular actor in a system under test.  Acceptance tests interact with the test persons to accomplish activities that would normally be performed

Example

Here is a typical gherkin acceptance test

Given I am a customer
When I am about to purchase an item that can be sourced in my country
Then the cheapest price should include 'free delivery' as a delivery option

Most natural language based test harnesses will require a developer to implement a mapping into structured code. For instance, using page objects and some implicit web steps

/I am a customer/
  visit CustomerHomePage

/I am about to purchase an item that can be sourced in my country/
  @item = find_item :stock_location => 'australia'
  visit url_for item :action => :purchase

/I should see 'free delivery' as an available delivery option/
  on_page(PurchasePage).delivery_options.
    should.contain :text => 'free delivery'

Once the persona pattern is applied, we see that the actual user is more explicit, but interactions with data are less so.

before_scenario do
  attr i
  Alias_method me, my, :i

/I am a customer/
  me= create_customer

/I am about to purchase an item that can be sourced from my country/
  my.desired_item = find_item :stock_location => my.location
  i.start_to_purchase_item

/I should see 'free delivery' as an available delivery option/
  my.purchase_page.delivery_options.
    should contain :text => 'free delivery'

In this refactored example, the persona (returned using create_customer) holds many of the methods that were previously implicit in the world class.

In my next post, I’ll discuss some of the patterns of use in persona-focussed acceptance testing

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