Professional Beta Testing vs. Public Beta Testing

There is a distinct difference between professional beta testing and conducting a public beta test. Knowing the difference between the two can help you decide what type of quality assurance you need to perfect your products.

Public Beta Testing

No matter your application, many publishers want to have an idea for how well their software will be received. The task at hand is to gather a group of individuals, each of whom fit their target marketplace demographics, provide them access to the software, and gauge their level of satisfaction. This process is referred to as “conducting a public beta test”.

• The feedback will be usability-related as these people will likely comment on the software’s intuitiveness, user interface, and overall ease of use.
• Public beta testers should not encounter defects that compromise the software’s functionality.  Issues of that type should already have been discovered, documented, and fixed prior to release to the public beta testers.  That process is referred to as “professional beta testing”.

Professional Beta Testing

All software has bugs. However, prior to releasing software to the public, all developers need to know (and fix) all issues that compromise the software’s functionality.  In addition, they need to ensure their software runs well on the myriad of desktops, laptops, and mobile devices in the marketplace.

• Towards the end of the software development life cycle, comprehensive testing guarantees a clean launch.
• The overall functionality should be exercised by professional beta testers who are completely unfamiliar with the software itself.
• Lab-based testers will find the defects and communicate them to the developers in such a way that the issues may be easily fixed.  Again, this process is called “professional beta testing”.

The bottom line is that if you want to greatly enhance your post-launch success, you need to pass your software through a professional beta testing lab like Beta Breakers.  Feel free to call us at 415.878.2990 to receive a free quote.