Fitnesse is a wiki built atop Fit, which creates test cases from HTML input. The wiki interface allows non-technical users to edit these input/output tables, and by interspersing these tables with a descriptive story (in XP/agile parlance) you get an executable requirements specification. Written by the user. Sounds like Utopia.

While FIT does indeed rock (especially with FitLibrary) it's not the only solution to getting requirement specs written by the user.

A technique I use a fair bit is to create a domain specific language for the user to write there tests in. Usually in Perl or Ruby. So instead of the FIT document shown here the user might write:

do_chat {
  connect_user "sarah";
  user "sarah" creates_room "fit";
  user "sarah" enters_room "fit";
  users_in_room "fit" name_is "sarah";
};

[download]

Never realising they're writing Perl :-)

Another common solution I've used is to get the user writing their test input/output in an Excel spreadsheet and parse that. Again, you get the user to use the tools they're more familiar with.

In reply to Re: How do I get good acceptance tests? by adrianh
in thread How do I get good acceptance tests? by pernod

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