Alpha and Beta Testing of Products

Dr. Rohit Rastogi

Associate Professor,
Computer Science & Engineering Department,
ABES EC, Ghaziabad
Affiliated to Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University, Uttar
Pradesh, Lucknow
Basic
Alpha testing is an internal testing process carried out
by developers to identify bugs early, while beta testing
involves external users to obtain real-world feedback
prior to the official release.

For a software product to be successful in market and of

high quality, both stages are essential.
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Alpha Testing
 Alpha Testing is a type of software testing performed to
identify bugs before releasing product to real users or to the
public.

 Alpha Testing is one of user acceptance testing.

 Thisis referred to as alpha testing only because it is done

early on, near the end of the development of the software.

 Commonly performed by homestead software engineers or

quality assurance staff.
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◦ Alpha testing is performed by a select group of internal
stakeholders, such as developers, testers, and members of
product team.

◦ Purpose of alpha testing is to identify and resolve critical bugs

and issues in software before it is released to the public. Alpha
testing is performed in a controlled environment, such as a lab
or a test network, and is used to simulate real-world use cases
and identify any potential problems.
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◦ During alpha testing, software is evaluated against a set of
predetermined acceptance criteria and is tested for
functionality, usability, performance, and stability. Alpha
testing provides an opportunity to identify and fix bugs and
issues before they reach end-users, ensuring that the final
product is of high quality and meets the needs of the target
audience.
Alpha Testing Process
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Requirement Review: Review design of specification and
functional requirement

Test Development: Test development is base on outcome

of requirement review. Develop test cases and test plan.

Test case design: Execute test plan and test cases.

Logging Defects: Logging identified and detected bug

found in application.
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Bug Fixation: When all bugs are identified and logged,
then there is a need to fix bug.

Retesting: When all issues are solved, and fixed retesting

is done.
Phases of alpha testing
Executed into two phases.
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First Phase
In-house developers of software engineers do this testing.
Tester used hardware debugger or hardware aided
debugger to catches bugs quickly.
During this, Tester finds a lot of bugs, crashes, missing
features, and docs.

Second Phase
Involves quality assurance staff performs alpha testing by
involving black box and white box techniques.
Advantages of Alpha Testing
Better insight about software’s reliability at its early
stages.
Free up your team for other projects.
It reduces delivery time to market.
Early feedback helps to improve software quality.
Disadvantages of Alpha Testing
Need a longer time for test plan execution if project is
large.
Sometimes, defects in products can be unknown.
Difficult to test entire product since it is still under
development.
It does not carry out reliability and security testing.
This test will only cover business requirements
mentioned by client.
It requires a separate lab environment for testing.
Beta testing
Beta testing is process of testing a software product or
service in a real-world environment before its official
release.

It is an essential step in software development lifecycle as

it helps identify bugs and errors that may have been
missed during development process.

During beta testing, software is made available to a

selected group of users who are willing to test product and
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Beta Testing is performed by real users of software
application in a real environment.

Beta testing is one of types of User Acceptance Testing.

A Beta version of software, whose feedback is needed, is

released to a limited number of end-users of product to
obtain feedback on product quality.

Beta Testing is a type of Field Test.

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Types of Beta Testing
Traditional Beta testing
Product is distributed to target market and related data is
gathered in all aspects.

Public Beta Testing

Product is released publicly to world through online
channels and data can be collected from anyone.
Based on feedback, product improvements can be done.
For example, Microsoft conducted largest of all Beta Tests
for its operating system Windows 8 before officially
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Technical Beta Testing
Product is released to a group of employees of an
organization and collects feedback/data from employees
of organization.

Focused Beta Testing

Software product is released to market for collecting
feedback on specific features of program.
For example, important functionality of software.
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Post-release Beta Testing
Software product is released to market and data is
collected to make improvements for future release of the
product.
Tools used for Beta Testing
Test Fairy
Center Code
TryMyUI
User Testing
TestRail
Usersnap
Zephyr
TestFlight
Advantages of Beta Testing
Itreduces product failure risk via customer validation.
Allows a company to test post-launch infrastructure.
Helps in improving product quality via customer
feedback.
Cost-effective compared to similar data gathering
methods.
It creates goodwill with customers and increases
customer satisfaction.
Disadvantages of Beta Testing
Sometimes, it is complex to follow errors or bugs because
testing environment varies from user to user.
Chance of having duplication of errors or bugs.
Development team and testing team are not having
control over this real-time test environment.
This testing is a time-consuming process since it involves
real time users or clients and hence delay in overall
feedback about entire product.
Users who are testing the product should have enough
knowledge about the working of the entire application or
 Alpha v/s beta testing
Parameters Alpha Testing Beta Testing

Alpha testing involves both the Beta testing commonly uses

Involvment
white box and black box testing. black-box testing.

Alpha testing is performed by Beta testing is performed by

Performed by testers who are usually internal clients who are not part of the
employees of the organization. organization.

Alpha testing is performed at the Beta testing is performed at the

Performed at
developer’s site. end-user of the product.

Reliability, security and

Reliability and Reliability and security testing
robustness are checked during
Security are not checked in alpha testing.
beta testing.
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Parameters Alpha Testing Beta Testing

Beta testing also concentrates on

the quality of the product but
Alpha testing ensures the quality
collects users input on the
Ensures of the product before forwarding
product and ensures that the
to beta testing.
product is ready for real time
users.

Alpha testing requires a testing Beta testing doesn’t require a

Requirement
environment or a lab. testing environment or lab.

Alpha testing may require a long Beta testing requires only a few
Execution
execution cycle. weeks of execution.
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Parameters Alpha Testing Beta Testing

Most of the issues or feedback

Developers can immediately
collected from the beta testing
Issues address the critical issues or
will be implemented in future
fixes in alpha testing.
versions of the product.

Multiple test cycles are Only one or two test cycles are
Test Cycles
organized in alpha testing. there in beta testing.