What is beta testing?
What is beta testing?
Beta Testing: Definition
A beta test is the second phase of software testing in software development in which a sample of the intended audience tries out the product. Beta testing is one of the types of acceptance testing that adds value to the product as the end-user (intended actual user) validates the product for functionality, usability, reliability, and compatibility.
Beta is the Greek alphabet's second letter. The term alpha test originally meant the first phase of testing in a system of software development. The first stage involves testing devices, testing components and testing of systems. Beta screening can be known as "pre-release testing."
Beta testing is also sometimes referred to as UAT or end-user testing. Applications are subject to real-world testing by the intended audience for the software in this software development phase. Early user experiences are returned to developers who make final changes before commercially releasing the software.
Customer experience obtained by end-users is asked for feedback on design, functionality, and usability, which helps to assess the product quality.
Note: Since Beta Testing takes place on the side of the end-user, it cannot be the activity that is controlled.
Beta Testing: Purposes
- Known problems acknowledged by the Product Management department may take a big turn when the end-user is faced with the same problem and may not be happy using the product. In such cases, this testing helps to analyze the impact of known problems on the whole product as the user experience becomes hampered and is not acceptable to any successful business.
- It could not be open to the internal testing team during the QA as a wide range of tools that end users are currently using, this testing also helps to find the unknown flaws and weaknesses in the final product.
- A wide range of consumers perform this, and the reasons for using the material vary greatly. Marketing managers concentrate on the opinion of the target market on each feature, while usability engineers / common real users focus on product use and ease, technical users, focus on installation and uninstallation experience, etc.
- Few unique systems can cause the product to fail with a discovered showstopper bug during QA. And this allows the brand to be compliant with all available channels in improvising/fixing.
- This testing can ensure real-world compatibility for a product to a greater extent, as a great combination of real platforms is used here for testing on a wide range of devices, OS, Browsers, etc.
- Beta Test gives a detailed overview of the true experience that end users have acquired when using the product.
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