Real World Example

A food-delivery team (think Swiggy or Zomato) writes acceptance criteria for a new "schedule order" feature with the product manager. The same text becomes the automated check, so the PM can read the test results in the Cucumber report.

@regression @orders
Feature: Scheduled orders

  @loggedIn
  Scenario: Customer schedules dinner for later
    Given the customer has "Paneer Butter Masala" from "Punjabi Dhaba" in the cart
    And the restaurant is open from "11:00" to "23:00"
    When the customer schedules the order for "20:30" today
    Then the order status is "SCHEDULED"
    And the checkout shows "Delivery at 8:30 PM"

@When("the customer schedules the order for {string} today")
public void scheduleFor(String time) {
    checkoutPage.chooseSchedule(LocalTime.parse(time));
    orderConfirmation = checkoutPage.placeOrder();
}

@Then("the order status is {string}")
public void orderStatus(String expected) {
    Assert.assertEquals(orderConfirmation.status(), expected);
}

mvn test -Dcucumber.filter.tags="@orders"

1 Scenarios (1 passed)
5 Steps (5 passed)
0m9.611s

• Write steps in business language ("schedules the order"), never UI language ("clicks the blue button").
• Keep a shared step library; duplicated steps with different wording are the biggest maintenance cost.
• Step definitions call page objects. Cucumber does not replace POM, it sits on top of it.