Continuous testing and functional health

The EKG knows about "its Stories" and continuously tests them. It therefore knows about its own "functional health" and can detect whenever something changes (code, ontologies, ETL, new policies) whether it can still deliver all functionality.

This means that Stories are not just requirements documents — they are living, executable specifications that the EKG monitors and validates throughout their entire lifecycle.

How it works

Every story has one or more test scenarios — concrete Given-When-Then checks that verify the story delivers what it promises. The EKG runs these test scenarios continuously, not just before deployment but also in production.

When a test scenario fails, the EKG knows exactly which story is affected, which use case it belongs to, and which personas are impacted. This turns a technical failure into a business-level signal.

Functional health

Functional health is the degree to which the EKG is delivering on its promises. It is measured by the ratio of passing test scenarios to total test scenarios across all stories.

Because the EKG tracks this continuously, stakeholders can answer questions like:

• Are all stories still delivering after last night's data load?
• Which use cases are affected by the ontology change we just deployed?
• What is the overall health of the EKG right now?

Coverage as a first-class metric

Stories without test scenarios are immediately visible as gaps. The goal is 100% story coverage — every story should have at least one test scenario verifying its behavior.

This makes testing a structural property of the EKG, not an afterthought.