Worried About Beta Testing? Presenting The Ultimate Cheatsheet For You

Posted on July 13, 2018 by tbsupadminnxtbackendacc

You come here in search for Beta Testing cheat sheet.

We won’t let you down!

Scroll down and read the ultimate cheatsheet than can help you to carry out the process as effectively as possible.

Cheat Sheet on Beta Testing

Many software includes crib sheets in their documentation which list the key points or the commands which help the user to simplify the task effortlessly.

Hence, we will provide you with the key points which can be useful in beta testing. Before proceeding with the beta test for your software you need to keep several things in your mind.

Firstly start off with the alpha test with your connections and friends or maybe family. After completing the alpha test, then have a private beta launch to get as many of the beta testers onboard. Start gathering the beta testers and make preparations for the beta test. Gather two-three developers or QA to handle the other aspects of the software. Do a proper planning before starting the beta test as it will make it easier for you to approach your goal.

Beta testing will take a minimum of 9-10 weeks to complete the process and gather enough data which is useful. Remember, if it is taking less than this expected time, the result wouldn’t give you the depth of the insights for your software. It may contain several inaccurate reports which can cause you a problem. You need significant information about your software, so if your beta testers take less time it meant the proper testing of your software has not been executed.

Create a better website landing page which can make it easier for the beta tester to sign up for your application beta testing procedure. Explain all the app features and functions of the software in the sign-up Beta testers which you’re going to select for the beta program must be aware of the application and how it works. Thus try to make your landing page which has more information about your software. Try to give in all the basic details which beta testers might need.

While creating a sign-up form for your beta testers make sure that you make them register and sign an agreement in which they have to send you bugs reports and feedback regularly. It will make them mentally prepared to send you feedback and significant reports. This will help in maintaining a proper balance for your feedback incident and will make it easier for you to keep track of every report.

Also Read : 12 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You about Beta Testing

It is mandatory to ensure that a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) must be signed by the beta testers. It is very much important that your information or results should not be leaked. It will protect your results and will give you a way to sustainable privacy. The NDA should specify the time period in which the information about the software or your company is not to be shared publically. This act should be undertaken while performing a beta test for your software. The agreement is not meant to be violated on legal terms. This will ensure the perfect security for your information.

You need to make sure that you gather around 200-300 beta testers. If you gather more numbers of beta testers it will be more useful. It will make sure that your software is going through every different aspect and real-life working condition. Every beta testers will be testing software in different ways. Hence, it will help you to get different feedbacks and work on them. Your software would undergo every platforms and condition which will certainly help in getting more feedbacks and improvements to your software.

The beta testing time period is initially the monitoring stage. If you’re aiming to new build the software, you have to make sure that you take minimums of two weeks to new build the software. This will give the beta testers enough time to try the software and provide you with the significant feedback. If you introduce new build in a short period of time, this might confuse the beta testers and the monitoring for the software would become typical. Try defining a certain time period in which you introduce new build software to the beta testers.

Use of various feedback tools which can help you to take feedback from the beta testers more efficiently. Use in-app feedback medium through which beta testers can easily provide you the feedback and bug report. Using in-app feedback medium would be more helpful and simpler instead of sending the bug reports and feedback via email or manual reports. Using feedback medium has shown over 500% more user feedback. Making use of feedback would be more effective and frequent, thus the modification in the software will also be frequent.

During beta testing try and avoid the introduction of a new feature in your software. This will become hard for the beta testers and might have to restart the testing process from the beginning because of any unplanned side effects. This will take more time and the process will become longer. Beta testers need proper time to try it and give you significant feedback.

Always encourage your beta testers with incentives and rewards. To make them more efficient you can give away discounts or your paid app for free. Make them happy by offering them their favorite restaurants’ free voucher or a free pizza at their favorite’s place. You can also offer them free t-shirts or mugs, especially when your software is a gaming application. This will make their involvement in the beta testing more interesting and rewarding.

Also, you need to make sure that the beta testers you’ve gathered are responding regularly. If you have a beta tester who is not responding, contact them and remind them at once of their agreement. You should make certain criteria limit which has to meet. It’s not necessary to keep the beta testers who don’t meet the criteria set by you. Also, make sure that you ask your software back to avoid any leak in the information about the software before the initial release if you have ended the agreement with the beta tester during beta testing.

If you’re distributing more than one build of that software. You must make sure how you’re going to differentiate between Adding a controlled number or another reference in your list to avoid the confusion. This will ensure the reports and the feedback are reproduced easily. Do not distribute more than one build if you don’t have serial number or references in your log. Minimize the risk of taking a long period of time to complete the beta test.

The above cheat sheet should give you enough insight into how to start with the beta test and what key points should be considered during beta testing of your software.

12 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You about Beta Testing

Posted on July 11, 2018 by tbsupadminnxtbackendacc

These days there is a lot of competition in the market. Every business wants to prove that they are the best and have the edge over other businesses. As everybody’s technology and strategies are improving day by day, there is a huge opportunity to learn from the others businesses too. Our biggest learning source comes from our rivals. They can teach us many things which you can easily grasp and improve yourself.

User Acceptance Test (UAT) is a software testing procedure executed in a real-world scenario. UAT has two types, Alpha, and Beta testing. Alpha testing takes place in the company whereas beta testing is field testing. The software is tested in real-world working conditions which takes place at the customer’s site.

12 Things You Can Learn From Your Competitors about Beta Testing

These are the followings practices which can be taught by other competitors about beta testing.

The important thing that you can learn from your competitors is how they proceed with the beta testing and how they strategize their every action. They prepared several instructions before proceeding with the beta testing. Proper project planning should be written down and agreed upon by the other fellow mates. The objective of the beta testing and how you’re going to achieve that goal should be clear. After you’ve prepared a proper plan then follow these steps to ensure the simplicity in your work. Also, the quantitative goal and business metrics must be selected in order to make a process smoother.

Selecting and recruiting a proper team of a beta tester is also a major role that should be kept in your mind. If you’ve ever looked at the team of other competitors who include professional beta testers, they are able to achieve their work more easily. You can also gather a team of professionals with experience in the beta testing. Their opinions and aspects would be totally different which will provide various working conditions which can be used for the beta testing procedure. Your team for beta testing won’t be of good use if there would be no opinions from the people who are experienced.

If you want to improve your structure of software or modifying it, you can learn how the other competitors take feedback from their users. By taking the proper feedback from their users they alter every single of the bugs or error which shows up during the beta testing procedure. You can also improve your software by taking feedbacks from your user when they start using the beta software. Thus if you gather the feedback more quickly, the better your approach would become. Most of the other companies have the habits to take a frequent feedback from their users to ensure everything’s working well. The feedback can be in the form of bugs report, quotes, suggestions or surveys.

Learn the major tools which are being used by the other software testing companies and try to understand the concepts of different tools which are used in the beta testing procedure. Thus it would be a great thing to learn from the other top companies and follow their footsteps. Try using different tools and adapt them. You can always learn new methods from the other competitors. Every company has their own methods and ways to proceed with the beta testing at a customer’s Make sure that you learn and improve your beta testing skills by using various tester tools which normally other companies are expert in using.

Make sure that you are running every aspect of beta testing. As you’ve already planned the layout on how you’re going to test the product. Other companies use various aspects to ensure their software is working properly before undergoing to the real-world conditions. They run every performance test to ensure that the software is ready for the beta testing procedure. You can learn from them how they perform various tests on their software in the alpha testing procedure. It can be expected that your product will surely perform well in beta testing.

Many of your competitors may use beta testing as a marketing strategy. They strategize their market planning and create awareness among the users about the beta software. It helps in creating a buzz among the beta users and creates eagerness among them. Thus you can also use this type of strategy to engage your beta users and create more eagerness among them. This will help in the involvement of a beta user if there is a new version of the beta software which is going to update.

If you want to make your application more useful, you need to understand what platforms you are using to test your software. Learn from the other competitors and see which platforms they are using for beta testing of their software. You can learn to release an app which can perform on more than one platform with more than one different ways of performance. This is the best way to make your software more usable by doing tests on different platforms which you can learn from your competitors.

You can use the tool which your competitors use to save time by taking the valuable feedback from the beta users. This will help you to take valuable feedback from the user directly to your tool services. You don’t have to ask them over a phone or visit them. This tool will help you to set up a particular email ID which can be used to catch feedback from the users. This tool will automatically convert the user’s feedback into requirement or bugs. This will make things hassle free and simpler.

You can learn simple to complex things from your competitors. The simplest thing which your competitors can teach you is the patience and integrity. You don’t have to falter when your QA testified software comes up with a lot of errors and bug while running beta testing. There are many companies which face failures and still come up with a great solution for their services. You can learn from their mistakes and improve your services. Their moral values will also boost your perspective to achieve the target.

Your competitors may use quantity of beta testers to test their software in a real You can also get a large number of beta testers who are professional in testing the software under real-work conditions. This will help you to get a plenty of feedback on different aspects of your software. Always look for the quality beta testers and invite them for beta testing.

The last thing you can learn from your competitors is how they handle their feedback and bugs reports. How fast they can be to provide the solution to that problem. You can have an effective team of experts which can take this valuable feedback and without wasting any time comes up with a solution and makes your software error Major companies solve their bug issue in just a few times after getting a feedback.

Try to Reward your beta testers so that they would always perform well. If your competitors use various methods to encourage their beta tester’s performance, you can also do the same. It will make your beta testers more efficient and effective while doing beta testing of your software.

What’s the Difference Between Alpha and Beta Testing: When to use them?

Posted on September 19, 2017 by tbsupadminnxtbackendacc

Alpha and beta testing might be confusing when it comes to explaining it, but the clear distance would be

Alpha testing is done before product release to find out issues it can have once it reaches the user. It’s a kind of user acceptance testing where a group of people will be given access to an early version and their reaction to the software will be recorded via video and questionnaire

Beta Testing on the other hand is testing the software after deployment. The Beta version of the software will be released in the AppStore itself and limited users who have signed up for beta testing will get access to the app.

Phases of Alpha and Beta Testing

Phases of Alpha testing

Alpha, Beta, and Gamma tests are usually done for product-oriented companies.

Pre-Alpha:- During this phase the software is in a prototype form. Though the UI is complete, all other features might still be incomplete.
Alpha: During this phase, the Software is close to the development, and internal testing for bugs and flaws begins.
Beta: During this phase, the software is released to a certain user base known as beta testers to collect their reviews and feedback and then Amend the software based on that feedback.
Gamma: After Beta Testing the changes are made to the software and the software is tested for any bugs or flaws. No major changes are made in the functionality of the software during this phase, rather software is checked for bugs and they are corrected.
Release: If everything goes well, the software is released to the public.

Alpha Testing

Alpha testing is a type of internal testing performed for Commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) by a highly-skilled group of testers and engineers at the developing site to find bugs that were initially not found.

This dedicated team observes the behavior and notes the product down the differences.

It usually involves testing the product by imitating the real user environment by carrying out tasks that an actual user might perform.

Once the software passes the alpha test, it is considered fit to be used for the next phase, i.e. beta testing.

The term ‘alpha’ can be differentiated based on the projects it is used for.

In the case of a web application, alpha testing can be interpreted as an online application that has access via personal invitation, to gather initial feedback from the users for improvement and bugs.

Pros of Alpha Testing

Primarily used as usability testing which is done by internal developers who develop the app or by the testers
Critical issues or fixes can be addressed by developers immediately in Alpha testing
This is one of the fast ways of getting approval from the customer before proceeding with the process of delivery
Any major or minor changes, which might have been missed in the requirement gathering phase, can be fixed at this stage itself

Cons of Alpha Testing

Data presented by the customer usually doesn’t represent the actual data. Data created by testers/team might need a pre-approval from the customer
Since alpha testing is just the usability testing, reliability and security are not performed
The key users of the system deployed by the customer might not be the actual system users in reality and may be unaware of the working of it

Beta Testing

Beta-testing basically deals with imitating the end-users input to ensure release readiness.

It’s considered the last stage of testing and includes distributing the products to beta test sites and individual users.

Some other tests may also include testing a free trial of the product downloaded from the internet.

The product is then tested by users in real-time to find bugs that are left to be fixed. It is also used to determine the quality of the product.

Beta testing also includes many sub-tests if required, for some software, particularly for PC games.

These tests are known as Open beta tests and closed beta tests.

The closed beta test is followed immediately after the alpha test ends and is limited to only a few selected beta testers.

The latter which includes testing by the general public is then known as the open test.

Pros of beta testing

This testing helps in identifying the gaps between the actual implementation and the requirement gathering. This may add/remove a few requirements
Any requirement which may not have been captured initially in the contract is worked upon thereby reducing the product failure risk via customer validation
The Beta test ensures the application runs in a real business environment with live data
The after-sales service requirements may be identified in beta testing. Any support required for future implementation can be understood and arranged accordingly

Cons of Beta testing

Finding the correct beta tester or a group of testers can sometimes be difficult
Since the testing is carried out in a real-time environment, you cannot have any control over the testing mechanism

Gamma Testing
Many of us have been turning around the term ‘Gamma’ thinking about its importance.

It is the third and final testing phase just before the release of the app.

Since being the final phase of the testing, Gamma does not include any enhancements and changes to be made to the product, only the part of the code that is wicked or tends to affect the performance of the product can be changed.

It validates the performance and functionality of the product making sure the product is completely ready for use by the end-user.

Pros of Gamma testing

You can be assured of the safety and functionality of your application just before its market release. It does not bring any chance of modification and changes unless the identified bug is of high importance.
This testing is done directly without any in-house testing being repeated. Hence, saves a lot of time
You can be well sure about the readiness of the application, fulfilling all the requirements stated by the customer

Cons of Gamma testing

There is very limited scope for the team to update or change the code, and if there is any, it might hamper the performance of the application
Due to heavy deadlines, increasing pressure, and shorter development cycles, many organizations tend to skip the Gamma testing phase

Phases of Testing

Alpha, Beta, and Gamma tests are usually done for product-oriented companies.

Pre-Alpha:- During this phase the software is in a prototype form. Though the UI is complete, all other features might still be incomplete.
Alpha: During this phase, the Software is close to the development, and internal testing for bugs and flaws begins.
Beta: During this phase, the software is released to a certain user base known as beta testers to collect their reviews and feedback and then Amend the software based on that feedback.
Gamma: After Beta Testing the changes are made to the software and the software is tested for any bugs or flaws. No major changes are made in the functionality of the software during this phase, rather the software is checked for bugs and they are corrected.
Release: If everything goes well, the software is released to the public.

Difference Between Alpha Testing And Gamma Testing

	Alpha	Beta	Gamma
Why is it done	End to end testing of the software, make sure the software is ready for beta testing	Beta Testing is done to ensure that the software is ready to be released to the market	Gamma testing test the software for some particular requirements
When is it done	Alpha Testing is done at the end of the development phase	Beta Testing is done after Alpha Testing	Gamma testing is done after Beta Testing
Who does it	In house development or testing team	Beta testers who are a group of end-users conduct Beta testing	Gamma testing is done by a limited number of end-users with limited features and use
Result	Alpha Testing detects the bugs, flaws, missing features in the software	It is done to improve the functionality, usability, and compatibility of the software	It gives assurance to the software that all specified requirements are met
Next step	Beta Testing	Gamma Testing	Final release

Care to see an infographic about the difference between alpha and beta testing?
Entry and exit criteria for Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Testing
Entry Criteria for Alpha testing:

Software requirements document
Complete list of Test Cases
Testing Team
Test Lab environment setup
Ready QA Build
Test Management tool
Traceability Matrix

Exit Criteria for Alpha testing:

Execution of all the test cases and their pass status.
Completed Test summary report
Severity issues fixed and closed
Sign off document

Entry Criteria for Beta Testing:

Alpha Testing Sign off document
Completed Beta version of the software
Test Environment for Beta testers
Real-time fault catching tools
A team of Beta testers

Exit Criteria for Beta Testing:

All issues should be fixed
Beta tester’s Feedback report
Beta testing summary report

Entry Criteria for Gamma Testing:

Beta testing summary report
Software is ready for public release
Software fulfills all its requirements for the Public Release

Exit Criteria for Gamma Testing

Software is ready for market release
No critical bug is detected in the software
Software fulfills all the specified requirements

Conclusion

Alpha and beta testing are very important when it comes to software engineering. So next time, don’t forget to do your homework about alpha, beta, and gamma testing for improved software quality.