Acceptance Test-Driven Development epitomizes Lean-Agile more than any other practice.  It’s heart is collaboration between product owners, developers and testers to both understand what is needed by the customer as well as how to set up the development team to implement and validate it.

It is the most commonly recommended skill we suggest all companies learn how to do.

Here’s our portal page on ATDD. Here are some of the subtopics on the page:

• Acceptance Test-Driven Development: A Quick Introduction (webinar)
• How to Start with ATDD using BDD
• Benefits of Acceptance Test-Driven Development using Behavior-Driven Development
• The Need to Improve Clarity of a Requirement
• How to Decide Whether to Start with ATDD or TDD
• Test-Driven Development: ATDD and UTDD

If you are looking at kicking off new teams in Agile ensure you get ATDD included in your initial training.

See Net Objectives’ offerings in ATDD here.

If You Are Implementing SAFe

SAFe suggests using ATDD but does not teach it except to some extent in their Agile Software Engineering course.  Unfortunately, this course is geared towards the team and doesn’t usually have product owners in it. When kicking teams off in SAFe it is important to include ATDD in their initial training – in such a course as Scrum With Agile Requirements for Teams Doing SAFe.