If two scenarios can occur at the same time, does that (always/ever) constitute a third scenario?
My current thinking is that they are not necessarily exclusive (depends on the scenario). If you have two scenarios that could occur at the same time that they would only require a third scenario if the Given/When/Then steps do not merge implicitly or if one scenario takes precedence over the other.
This question has arisen whilst thinking about scenarios for what is essentially a form of injection in which Collections of objects get injected into another object ( https://github.com/jameskennard/mockito-collections ). So given the two scenarios “Class of object under test has a List of collaborators” and “Class of object under test has a Set of collaborators“. Both could occur at the same time so a third scenario could be “Class of object under test has a List and a Set of collaborators“. But it doesn’t feel right, it’s just too verbose, I think the Given/When/Then steps would be seen to merge implicitly. (Have a bad feeling I may have just answered my own question)
Anyone have any differing thoughts?
I think the key here is the behavior. The potential third scenario (“Class of object under test has a List and a Set of collaborators”) that you’re asking about is of course real but the behavior is already covered by the other two scenarios so I’d say there is no need to write another scenario.
If the combination of givens was to result in different behavior there would certainly be a third scenario but I believe the two you have cover the behavior you’re looking to define.