Introduction to Alpha and Beta Testing
Alpha and Beta Testing can be defined as the testing process performed on the respective Alpha and Beta versions of a software system, where the testing is executed from the customer standpoint. This leads to capturing all the key defects, understanding the customer’s expectations on the product, customer’s comfort in the usability of the product, record the feedback from business stakeholders and critics, etc. Almost all of the bigger software organizations prefer releasing the Alpha and Beta version of the software before launching the actual softwares, and so the Alpha and Beta Testing are essential in the current technological world.
Understanding Alpha Testing
Mostly carried on by internal QA and test teams. it acts as the final layer of testing from the development site. It usually takes place after acceptance testing.
The key people involved in alpha testing areas are below,
- First phase by developers
- Second phase by software QA people
The process of alpha testing involves the below steps,
- Requirements and design specifications are reviewed.
- Test plans and test cases are developed comprehensively.
- Test plan execution.
- Log defects.
- Determine the issues captured.
- Enlist the issues.
- Get the issues fixed.
- Retest the whole setup.
Understanding Beta Testing
This phase helps the developing segment to gain user-level feedback on the software shared. After completion of alpha testing, the beta testing process comes into role. Here the whole software will be available for use to some set of external users. Here the software version initially shared with users is called a beta version. Only this version of testing allows the use of real-time users in their real-time environment.
This segment of testing assists in wrapping the segment where the testing of the application for its corresponding classified set of environments can be tested. Beta releases build it to ease where a large number of applications on the test machines can be tested with ease, and their errors can be flexibly determined and fixed. These selections of test groups in the beta level can be accomplished according to company needs. Like either a smaller sample test group can be invited by the developer company or make it open for any user in the company, this acts as a great cost-saving scenario because a couple of major fixes can be easily determined in this phase.
Advantages of Alpha and Beta Testing
- Determining and fixing bugs that were missed in previous testing phases.
- The reliability and usage level of the product can be determined.
- Build in the faith of the customer for the product.
- Management of testing in an effective manner.
- Before and after the launch of the product, the possible factors of risk can be easily judged.
- Better opinions and perceptions of the product can be gathered.
- Real-time user feedbacks largely enhances the life cycle and timeline of the product in the market.
- Customer satisfaction can be accomplished.
Disadvantages of Alpha and Beta Testing
- Customers may not strictly follow according to the scope of the product.
- All these processes involve a large amount of documentation which is going to be large time-consuming.
- These testing scenarios may neglect some test scenarios in some instances.
- On the other end, these cases operate only on the operation scope of business.
Why Alpha and Beta Testing?
- Tools for testing websites.
- Form of Agile project management
- Quality assurance in software products.
- These tests are reviewed and designed for business requirements.
- Traceability matrix ought to be accomplished for all the alpha tests and requirements.
- Domain testing team with knowledge about the domain and product.
Examples
When tech giants launch new products in the market, they prefer alpha testing on their products. The beta test commences with a gathering of every stakeholder as soon as an adequately steady beta build process is ready.
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These meetings are conducted frequently all the way through the beta test to keep posted of every one of the stakeholders on the advancement of the beta test and collect reactions and proposals from the rest of the teams. Also, beta test teams put forth recurrent meetings to proactively monitor the beta test and take remedial behavior if needed.
This segment of testing assists in wrapping the segment where testing of the application for its corresponding classified set of environments can be tested. Beta releases build it to ease where a large number of applications on the test machines can be tested with ease, and their errors can be flexibly determined and fixed.
Conclusion
Both these testing techniques are largely significant in each of the companies and also play a major role in the success of a product. Moreover, these techniques provide quality increase and performance increase for the product and also helps to troubleshoot the releases of the software in the market. These phases of testing largely boost the satisfaction of stakeholders and customers in the market.
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