Hi all,
In this post we are going to see about alpha & beta testing. In our organization, we are going to test the project that is called alpha testing. Alpha testing usually done by the development organization of the project. After build section end project will be in ready for QA section in that section testers will do alpha testing after alpha testing, prior to release the project beta testing opportunity will be given to expert persons in the field those who are interested to test the project in real world from out of the organization they can test and give their valuable QA & SQA comments (Bug report), most of the comments will be fixed in next release of the particular software. It is depends to the priority and severity of the bugs.
1.Both terms (alpha and beta) are used primarily in the technology industry (software and hardware).
2.Most products include both alpha and beta test phases.
3.Some companies use terms like field trials, prerelease, customer validation, CAT (customer acceptance testing), UAT (user acceptance testing), and beta testing synonymously.
4.Both phases are excellent at discovering bugs.
| Alpha Test | Beta Test | ||||||||||
| What they do | Improve the quality of the product and ensure beta readiness. | Improve the quality of the product, integrate customer input on the complete product, and ensure release readiness. | |||||||||
| When they happen | Toward the end of a development process when the product is in a near fully-usable state. | Just prior to launch, sometimes ending within weeks or even days of final release. | |||||||||
| How long they last | Usually very long and see many iterations. It’s not uncommon for alpha to last 3-5x the length of beta. | Usually only a few weeks (sometimes up to a couple of months) with few major iterations. | |||||||||
| Who cares about it | Almost exclusively quality/engineering (bugs, bugs, bugs). | Usually involves product marketing, support, docs, quality and engineering (basically the entire product team). | |||||||||
| Who participates (tests) | Normally performed by test engineers, employees, and sometimes “friends and family”. Focuses on testing that would emulate ~80% of the customers. | Tested in the “real world” with “real customers” and the feedback can cover every element of the product. | |||||||||
| What testers should expe | Plenty of bugs, crashes, missing docs and features. | Some bugs, fewer crashes, most docs, feature complete. | |||||||||
| How they’re addressed | Most known critical issues are fixed, some features may change or be added as a result of early feedback. | Much of the feedback collected is considered for and/or implemented in future versions of the product. Only important/critical changes are made. | |||||||||
| What they achieve | About methodology, efficiency and regiment. A good alpha test sets well-defined benchmarks and measures a product against those benchmarks. | About chaos, reality, and imagination. Beta tests explore the limits of a product by allowing customers to explore every element of the product in their native environments. | |||||||||
| When it’s over | You have a decent idea of how a product performs and whether it meets the design criteria (and if it’s “beta-ready”) | You have a good idea of what your customer thinks about the product and what s/he is likely to experience when they purchase it. | |||||||||
| What happens next | Beta Test! | Release Party! | |||||||||
Art of Testers 