Building upon the shoulders of giants

In recent days, I received an email from Francois Beauregard thanking me for my book and, especially, for the dedication I wrote in his copy of the book. Basically, I wrote to Francois that my book would never have happened if he had not encouraged me to explore the field of executable specifications.

The little I have done in writing the book is built on the shoulders of giants such as Francois. Francois is a pioneer who has done much to popularize the field of executable specifications. In 2006, when you search for “executable specifications” on Google, the first results were heading to GreenPepper, a software development tool  that was a direct competitor to Fitnesse.

GreenPepper was built by Pyxis, the company that Francois is the founder. Already in those years, Francois was describing GreenPepper as a tool for writing executable specifications:

“GreenPepper allows Agile teams to collaboratively write executable specifications by enabling Story Driven Development across the team.”

I can only thank Francois for introducing me to the GreenPepper tool and later for allowing me to work with the team behind the product.

Unfortunately, today GreenPepper no longer exists. Only memories remain. But it is not so important as the field of “executable specifications” is still alive, more than ever.