Beta testing

Beta testing, or as it is usually called ‘to test drive the software’ is an essential stage in the SDLC. In this stage, a product that is almost complete is given to a number of external end users who were not part of the development team to use the product. This phase can also be referred to as “user acceptance testing” and it is the last phase of testing were the aim is to ensure that there are no more bugs that could have escaped the earlier phases of testing. In a nutshell, beta testing is a process of putting the software into practical use prior to official release, and thus the beta testers imitate market conditions.

The beta version is the ‘dress rehearsal’, where the application is released to the target audience and feedback is collected to make the last changes before the release of the final version. Beta testers are people who have no prior exposure to the product and thus they are able to give the developers a different attitude that the in-house developers may not be able to give. Some of the information that can be obtained from such testers is the bug reports and features that they may require from the software.

Types of Beta Testing

Beta testing offers various approaches, each suited for different scenarios: That is, beta testing has multiple strategies, and each is suitable for distinct situations:

• ‍Closed Beta Testing: Just as an exclusive party, where the software is released to a limited number of chosen end-users or devoted consumers. These users provide information which can be important at the time of searching problems that were not revealed during the previous phases.
• ‍Open Beta Testing: The code is released to the public domain and anyone can try using it. It can also be seen as a kind of load test that can demonstrate the behavior of the application in conditions close to stress-testing. It enables the developers to identify the server load and its capacity before the traffic booms.
• ‍Technical Beta Testing: This procedure is intended for the technophile, the developer, the first adopter, and the IT worker, and exercises the software in order to provoke faults and evaluate the technical viability.

Importance of Beta Testing

Beta testing is not a plug-and-play scenario but rather pushes the software's capabilities in several compelling ways: Beta testing is not a plug-and-play scenario but rather pushes the software's capabilities in several compelling ways:

• ‍Bug Detection: Beta testing is a way of knowing the issues which may have been overlooked during software development and at the same time testing how the software operates before it goes to market. This way the changes are not required to be made after the launch of the website and therefore are minimal in the feedback phase.
• ‍User Satisfaction: This is the case since, in beta testing, considerations made include the quality of the software and the experience hence ensuring that it meets the needs of the end user as far as functionality, speed and satisfaction is concerned.
• ‍Feedback Gathering: It is a process through which the developers can get an idea about how the concerned users who are interested in the product will use the product and the modification which is required in it before introducing the product in the market.

‍