Here's a sequence of steps that you may like to try.
| 1. | Choose a business area of interest to you that has a workflow component and that you'd like Fit tests for. We assume that a system already exists, but that's not necessary for these exercises. |
| 2. | Get together with a few others who share your interest, have a background that you may lack in the business, and have good testing skills or good abstraction skills, such as programmers. |
| 3. | Pick the smallest piece of that business workflow, and create or find an example. At this stage, don't try to create a Fit table. Focus on finding regular statements that you can make in English. (Those with an Extreme Programming background are advised to write stories.) |
| 4. | You may like to start writing these up on a whiteboard or on large sheets of paper, whatever you find works best. Don't use a computer to do this, because it will slow the process down and focus the attention on one person at the keyboard. |
| 5. | If too many things are going on at once, list them and decide which one to tackle first or next. It's easy enough to extend once you make progress on some of them. |
| 6. | After you've played with a few statements, try expressing them in Fit tables, using words from your statements as keywords in the actions. |
| 7. | Look for the usual three phases of the test: setup, action, and check. |
| 8. | If you find that your test is too long, consider breaking it up. Are several tests in there? Are you trying to deal with too many conditions too early? Simplify whenever you get stuck. |
| 9. | Keep the examples concrete and meaningful; that will make them much more useful, and you will make faster progress. |
| 10. | Don't spend too long on one example; trying several with some variation will give you a better sense of what needs to be expressed. |
| 11. | Don't spend too long at it; building shared understanding and vocabulary can be hard work, so stop for a break before you need it. When you start again, you may be surprised at how much your thinking has changed in the meantime, without effort. |
| 12. | If too many opinions conflict, try to focus on the examples that you can agree on; that gives you a basis for better discussing the differences later. |
