Alpha, Beta, Live!
You may have seen or heard the use of Alpha and Beta testing before, but what does it all mean?
You may have seen or heard the use of Alpha and Beta testing before, but what does it all mean? They're not just letters of the Greek alphabet, there's a lot more to it than that.
As part of our ongoing transformation, we'll be changing to an AGILE method of delivery. This has many benefits including:
- Rapidly releasing products
- Regularly engaging with users
- Reacting to changes in needs
Throughout this process, we'll be releasing products at different stages and continually engaging with users to gain insight on what works, what doesn't and what should be improved.
Alpha
This is the earliest stage that a product can be released. We test a product with a small group of users who may pop into our offices to try out working prototypes in order for us to gain feedback on how they would expect them to work.
Often, more ideas are fed back into the team who will make changes based on this valuable insight.
Beta
Succeeding the alpha testing and any additional development, we release a working product to a larger group of users. We're still able to gain feedback during the beta stage based on actual user metrics and will continue to develop the product based on quantifiable measurements.
Live
We'll then issue a full release of a product when we're certain users can fulfil all necessary actions without fail. But the work doesn't stop there, as we're working in an ever changing industry with evolving user needs, we need to be adaptable by making continuous improvements.
What next?
Again, the work to improve our products doesn’t stop there. We'll continually monitor data based on usage and other forms of feedback so we can ensure they're working for our users.
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