Winn

Why not? Some developers call public beta “Bullshit”, they say that you are afraid to release a full version and put the blame out of your hands. They go on to also say that this is a “if it does not work don’t blame us” type of attitude.

I feel public beta for a public product is key in making a really great application for the public. That is exactly the way I work, currently the June To-Do system is up for public beta and is doing great because of it! The public has killed some very small bugs along with some huge ones! I feel if I did not release the system under public beta for free, I would be ripping people off by making them pay to find bugs.

If we as developers think that public beta is crap then how can we truly build an application for the public? Real users give real results in the end; closed testing is great if the project will not be going public. Your application my look different to a 50-year-old person then it does to a 20-year-old person. By allowing your app to go public beat this will give you a better understanding of how people see your application in a real world setting.

I have done many updates to June thanks to many public beta testers! I would have never seen some of the problems if I did not have people test or beta this product. I agree with some of the things said such as saying no to your customer or beta tester. I can’t add every feature known to man in my applications, and many times this is what you may get. Your testers may ask for a million different features to add, but you do need to keep it to the goal by asking yourself a few questions. What will this do for my application? Will this aid in the main gold of this application? Would you use it? If you answer in a positive way to the three questions then it would be a good time to think about adding that feature.

But back to public beat testing, as I have always told my clients that want online applications; testing is the key, then test some more. So what do I do if the application is not a public app? That’s an easy one to answer! After building the application, send it off to the people or office that will be using it. Setup a form for them to submit bugs and requests, that’s easy to do! Collect all the emails and start working on the fixes, once done send it for testing again! You should repeat this process for as long as it takes. Remember, some bugs will not show them self’s right away. Some take days, weeks or even months to show up, so time is your good buddy.