#process of beta testing

Following are the six essential components of a beta test plan:

1. A brief outline about the product: What is the product all about, what it is going to do and for whom it is targeted needs to be pondered upon. Basic features must be involved and the product description should be documented. How testers will use this product and leverage it needs to be analyzed properly.

2. The stakeholders involved: who will be those professionals taking up the responsibility of the test results and what will be their plan needs to be evaluated. It may be a CEO who may be directly involved or a departmental team who is interested to be a part of the beta testing process. When the beta test plan is being developed, the concerned team must reach out to these potential stakeholders and ask for their availability and interest in carrying out the beta testing activity. They must also be certain that the feedback that is being gathered should be studied, analyzed, and evaluated based on the organizational goals.

3. A streamlined process for conducting tests: In this component, recruitment and launch strategies, test design and preparation, reporting, management process and closure procedures should be properly summarized. A step-by-step approach in taking your test plan to the next level would prove to be useful.

4. Scheduling tests: When beta tests are scheduled then the time and resources can be used productively, thereby not resulting in wastage of man-hours. When testers know about the exact schedule of the test which includes the date, time, place, and other necessities involved, then the entire process can be smoothly and effectively carried out.

5. Gathering valuable feedback: When it comes to beta tests, there are two types of feedback involved and those are ongoing and directed feedback. Both of these types are considerably important. Ongoing feedback is where the feedback is provided by the testers based on their convenience and so there is no hard and fast rule. Some of the types of ongoing feedback are journals, open discussions, suggestions, etc.

Directed feedback is where specific feedback needs to be collected from the testers like mock reviews, tasks, surveys, etc. A specific question needs to be answered or a particular hypothesis needs to be validated in this particular feedback type.

Software testing is an essential part of the software development lifecycle. Different phases of the SDLC cycle require different types of testing. In this article, we will explore one such type of testing that helps to reduce the risk of product failure through customer validation – beta testing.

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What is beta testing?

Beta testing is a software testing type that is performed at the last stage of the software testing lifecycle (STLC) after the completion of alpha testing. In this testing, a nearly completed (90%-95%) version of the software also known as the beta version of the software is released to a limited no. of end-users to gain their feedback on accessibility, usability, reliability, functionality, etc.

Beta testing involves testing the product in a real environment with real users. The stakeholders of the beta test are the product management team, quality management team, and user experience team whereas the participants of beta testing are real users or end-users of the product.

Why should businesses leverage beta testing?

Beta testing helps teams to improve the quality of their products but there are some other benefits as well which are mentioned below:

1. Beta testing allows product owners to manage requirements that either has not been fulfilled or left in the backlog. It also helps them to prioritize requirements.

2. The beta test helps to uncover real-time usage bugs, thus it gives insights into the product’s performance in real world

3. Beta testing is done by real-users or end-users thus; it gives a more genuine and real insight into whether the product will be liked by end-users or not if it is launched

What is the process of beta testing?

Below mentioned are the steps involved in performing the beta test:

1. Identify and select the target platform for beta testing: Select the right platforms for which you want to test your software product. You have to choose from various OS and devices to get your product beta tested.

2. Invite Beta testers: Invite and carefully select your beta testers. Ideally, you should have 200-300 beta testers at the start so that you can get more feedback and suggestions for product improvement. You can invite beta testers from various sources – online and offline.

3. Distribute beta testers: Now that you have a list of beta testers ready, it’s time to send them an invite by selecting the right distribution tool. Some of the beta test distribution tools are TestFlight, Google Play Developer Console Crashlytics (Fabric), etc.

4. Collect feedback: Now that end-users have tested your product, it's time to take feedback from them. Feedbacks can either be positive or negative depending completely on the experience that people had with your product.

5. Evaluate and Iterate: Based on the feedback and suggestions received from the participants, make iterations to your product so that it becomes ready for delivering the best user experience.

6. Reward beta testers: Since testers have provided their valuable time and feedback, you should reward them with promised incentives. Rewards can be of various types such as coupons, discounts, promo codes, offers, etc.

Conclusion: Beta testing is an important software testing types that help businesses to test their product with real users and gain real-time feedback. The beta test helps in improving the quality of the product and also helps to deliver an unmatched experience to customers. Leverage beta testing from a next-gen QA and software testing services provider to achieve quality software.