I'm more of a PHP developer, so I use Behat instead of Cucumber. However: 1. The value of BDD is that you have some stories with examples written in the langua

I'm more of a PHP developer, so I use Behat instead of Cucumber. However: 1. The value of BDD is that you have some stories with examples written in the language of end users. You can use a tool like Behat or Cucumber that parses those stories and runs them as automated tests, but it's not fundamental, and you shouldn't avoid using BDD just because the automation aspect is too difficult. 2. Avoid using Behat to interact with the browser, make HTTP calls or run command line scripts. Otherwise your features become too tightly coupled with your views. Use Behat to test your services and domain entities directly, and not to test the framework, because testing the whole application (including the framework, if you're using one) is slow and wasteful. If you want to automate the browser, there are better/faster options than Cucumber and Behat. 3. BDD features are not the same as functional tests. Your features should focus on the typical use cases and read like end-user documentation, while your functional tests should include edge cases and should be optimised for developers.