AlphaBeta Finder
AlphaBeta Finder

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS/FAQ

 

GENERAL QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ALPHABETA FINDER SERVICE

What would I use AlphaBeta Finder for?

If you are developing new hardware or software, you would use AlphaBeta Finder to locate and connect to pre-qualified, interested, and willing Alpha and Beta testers for your project. You would obtain real world feedback on the design, market, features, and salability of your product. You would gain pre-production users who could be grown into customers or references when your product debuts.

If you enjoy exploring new technology and have some time, you would use AlphaBeta Finder to subscribe as an Alpha or Beta user. You would try out new hardware or software with the best technical support you can get--the originating development team. You would be able to shape new software or hardware and influence its design and behavior. Good Alphas and Betas are often frustrated by current software or hardware products and want a chance to make their needs and opinions known. Alphas and Betas might want to learn about particular types of new products for their own careers or on behalf of their companies. They might want to brush up their technical skills, make contacts with rising software or hardware vendors in their industry, or find out what emerging technology is doing.

Whether you are a potential Alpha or Beta participant or a potential development project company looking for Alphas or Betas, your AlphaBeta Finder relationships occur only after you agree to have us make contact. The identity of both sides is kept strictly confidential and is only revealed when you agree to be contacted and only after reviewing voluntary information about the project or the Alpha and Beta prospect.

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What's unique and valuable about AlphaBeta Finder?

Our value derives from the following:

  • Dedicated only to matching Alphas, Betas, and development projects
  • Plentiful database of real world users and projects
  • Neutral service with unbiased, independent users and projects
  • Highly qualified, willing Alphas and Betas
  • Highly refined and documented Development Project information
  • No harrassment --double verifies that participants are willing, available, and qualified
  • True confidentiality for all involved
  • Automatic real time status on project progress for testers and developers
  • Extremely low rates
  • Many referenceable, satisfied customers
  • Years of experience in Alpha and Beta phases that was applied to design our service

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What About Privacy?

The Privacy topic is so important to us, we have a separate web page for it. Please click here to access it. Go to Top

I have a development project that is nearing Beta; why would I use your service?

Because AlphaBeta Finder.com is the fastest, most confidential, and least expensive way to contact willing, qualified Betas for real world test of your project. AlphaBeta Finders has a pool of thousands of willing volunteers with more added each day. We take proactive steps to keep their information fresh and current. Your project is kept as confidential as you want it to be, and only qualified Betas are shown your information so that they can make a decision about testing with you. You are completely in charge of what you record about your company and project and how many Betas we contact for you. You pay only for the contacts you want, and it is much much less than other methods such as telemarketing, email compaigns, trade show exhibits, or hiring business development experts to find Betas. We charge you only for eligible results--Betas who meet your requirements and want to test your product. Even the most budget constrained start-up can afford the rates we charge for qualified Betas.

Not only is our service inexpensive and efficient, we open doors to rare and obsolete machine and technology configurations that you may not have been able to locate before. We allow you to search on rare combinations--nurses who have stock market backgrounds, bankers who like to play with network hardware in their spare time, restaurant owners who have a running OS/2 machine in their garage. If you have exhausted your rolodex and still cannot find appropriate testers, why not give us a try? You pay only when and if you find eligible contacts who meet your specifications. Go to Top

What Problems Does AlphaBeta Finder Solve for a Development Company?

  • Are you an organization developing a software or hardware product that needs some real world feedback on design, usage, or applicability of your product?
    • Do you need to find some real users to validate your concepts or prototypes?
  • Are you a start-up development team without deep contacts into the industry or segments your product will serve?
  • Does your budget prohibit you from purchasing the variety and combinations of hardware and software needed to test your product?
  • Do you lack the testing staff to conduct a widespread multi-user or load test on your product?
  • Have you found your previous Beta phases ineffective for obtaining real world input?
  • Has your company wasted precious time and money nurturing Betas only to find that they did not follow through on their commitment to try out your product?
  • Has your company had to purchase hardware and software for Beta users who did not have the right configuration or release levels you needed?
  • Has your company had to use their most critical technical resources to support Betas who just did not have the backgrounds you needed but at least were willing to host your trial?
Most of these difficulties could have been solved with a large pool of willing users and test sites with a wide range of skills, backgrounds, and configurations to choose from. AlphaBeta Finder has this pool.

Have you ever worked on a development project that guessed wrong about its initial phase features or feasibility?

Could this mistake have been avoided if pre-production input had been obtained? Has your development team disagreed about and debated endlessly what users would really want or use in the product?

These problems can be solved by communicating to a set of willing, able, and pre-qualified users. Both quantity and quality Alpha and Beta contacts can be made using the AlphaBeta Finder service, heading off these difficulties for your development project.

You can confidentially connect to Alpha and Beta individuals users or sites who want to participate through the AlphaBeta Finder service. You will be able to tap a much larger pool of potential users than you would by pressuring your executive team to go through their rolodexes. You can search our profiles to find the hardware/software configurations you need as well as the business backgrounds and other skills you need to obtain relevant input.

We provide you with the means to make targeted searches of our Alpha and Beta users and organizations. You see the search results and all their qualifying information except their identities. The searches themselves provide informative indicators of user characteristics and configurations. For example, you can learn how plentiful financial skills are out in the general market or whether a particular application server is generally available. This information by itself is valuable for planning and priority purposes. You then select just those users you want us to contact on your behalf. We contact them with your project details and forward you the contact details only for those who confirm they are willing to participate in your trial. On your own, you then contact any of these potential participants, do further screening as you need, and make arrangements with them to view, install, and use your product under conditions you set with them.

Your AlphaBeta Finder search screen shows you real time, up to date records of your searches and the users and organizations that meet your search requirements and their status. For example, you see how many have accepted your email invitation. If you purchase contacts, you see the contact info on the screen. You see date stamps of how long your emails have been outstanding. You can add to a search or modify your search filters and send more emails if you are not getting enough participants. You can access your email invitation and increase the reward if you need to motivate more users. In these ways, AlphaBeta Finder serves as your real time management dashboard to your test project. Go to Top

Our CEO was hired because he has extensive contacts in the industry. Why should we use a service like AlphaBeta Finder.com?

To put it bluntly, because you need unbiased feedback to see if your product really will work and sell in the real world. Your CEO's contacts are in his rolodex because of prior interactions that made these relationships mutually supportive. While you certainly can and should solicit these contacts for feedback on your product, they will never constitute the pure market reaction you will encounter in the cold hard world. Unless you plan only to sell your product to prior and proven relationships, you need to see how it will fare in the real world. You need as many Alphas and Betas as you can afford and as time allows to refine your product so that it will succeed in today's market. You need to be able to tap users who have the machine configurations, software or hardware experience, and backgrounds that are true predictors of your product's success. It is unlikely that you can dictate the machine type, skill level, and even the availability and time of testers who are friends and family of your company's executives. Make every effort to do everything you can to improve your product's chances in the real world by getting it in front of prospective real world users. Go to Top

How much will AlphaBeta Finders Cost Me?

If you are an Alpha or Beta user or organization, registering and participating in AlphaBeta Finder will not cost you anything AND you could earn a handsome reward from the development company for your efforts. We strongly urge our development companies that Alpha and Beta users be rewarded and supported for their knowledge and time. See our rewards topic below.

If you are a development company with a project to test, obtaining Alpha and Beta users through AlphaBeta Finder.com is still the least expensive and most convenient and fruitful method of reaching these critical users. Our rates are a fraction of what hiring a marketing firm to find you these contacts would cost. Our rates are much much cheaper, more confidential, AND lower risk than going to conventions or trade shows with your non-production software to try to solicit these users. Our email-based methods of approaching only interested users predisposes them to welcome your contact instead of reacting negatively to your request. And you can keep your project confidential, hand selecting the details you want to reveal and to whom you want to reveal them. If stealth mode is important to your project, AlphaBeta Finder's privacy is a huge advantage for you. You pay only for the contacts you want, can see their details before you buy, and are free to make arrangements for testing, travel, rewards, and feedback according to your needs. You can withdraw from AlphaBeta Finder at any time and are under no obligation to continue to use our service if it is not getting the results you want.

If you are a development company looking for Alpha and Beta testers, you are not charged to register your project and not charged to do searches just to see if eligible participants meet your testing requirements. For example, if you have built a web-based dental office management system, you will be able to register your project and conduct searches just to see if any dentists are available to test with you. You can do this window-shopping without any charge to you. Many development companies use these free searches just to find out something about the popularity of certain configurations or user segments.

If you are a development company with a project to test and your searches produce contacts, you can purchase email contacts from us for as many of them as you'd like. For example, if your search for Alpha users produces 300 eligible user profiles, you can decide to purchase only 20 of them from us. We would charge you a modest amount for each contact. See our Ratesweb page for our current rates. You would specify those contacts you want us to make by reviewing their user profiles (their identity does not appear).

We then send the contacts you selected emails with your project details and ask if they want to participate in a test with you. We give them 30 days to respond OR you can choose an expiration date on your invitation if you prefer. At the halfway mark in time, we resend the emails automtically to increase the response rate. At any time, you can see on your project screen, how many Accepted, Declined, or No Response participants you have gotten. You can then purchase the direct contact details for as many of the "Accepted" users as you'd like. See our Rates web page for current rates on this contact information service. At that point, you make the test arrangements you prefer with each of them and can grow or maintain the relationship for as long as both parties agree.

If you have completed a development project profile and want to see our current rates, click here. Go to Top

I Have a Hardware Appliance to Beta--Does your service have eligible Betas for hardware?

Yes--technology hardware projects can obtain qualified Alpha and Beta contacts through our service. Remember there is no cost just to enter your profile and try some searches. But you might be surprised how technically savvy and ready our user base is. Our profile requests information about their network type and speed. We also ask if they have an affinity for hardware or experience in hardware. Some sample hardware projects using our service were developing data storage units, medical blood pressure devices, network spam filtering appliances, search routers, security hardware/software solutions, and even oil field measurement devices. Go to Top

How Does the Matching and Contacting Work?

AlphaBeta Finder is a confidential referral and matching service for development projects and voluntary Alpha and Beta testers and test sites who provide their time, insight, and reactions, and may provide their computer environment and configuration for testing. We ask individuals looking to be testers or organizations willing to be test sites to complete a profile with as much information as they can offer. The reason you would want to spend time on this profile is that the more precisely you document your skills and expertise, the more likely you are to be well compensated for your testing. For example, just entering that you have an Internet connection, the IE browser and Windows XP on your home computer will qualify you for many Alpha or Beta opportunities. You might be asked to run through a catalog shopping trial or a online travel request. But if you worked as a travel agent and used travel reservation software, your listing this experience may get you a more unique testing opportunity. Perhaps a start-up that is introducing an innovative travel reservation system wants experienced travel agents to give feedback on the navigation of their new system. They will much more likely be well compensating for this type of knowledgeable testing. So, although it is time consuming, entering as much information as possible (or saving your profile and entering additional information later) will move you into the more highly qualified realm of feedback and testing.

If you are an experienced technician with specialized knowledge of software such as Web Servers, Virtual Machines, Operating Systems, Databases, Scripting, or ERP Systems like SAP, your knowledge is really valuable as an Alpha or Beta user and companies are actively looking for you.

Most of the development companies that use our service are willing to compensate Alpha and Beta users in some way. You are providing them with valuable input that is critical to their success. Typical compensations are training and exposure to new software or hardware, free or discounted software or hardware, gifts, gift certificates, or honorarium fees for your time and effort. In some cases, partnering, contracting or employment may eventually come from the relationship that started from this introduction. However, note that AlphaBeta Finder.com is an initial matching and referral service and does not stay involved in the relationship after the referral. Therefore, it is up to you to make the most of the introduction and opportunities you find through AlphaBeta Finder. See our Terms of Use for more information. Go to Top

What's the Best Way to Start as a Registered User?

Starting out as an Alpha is a great way for both sides of the equation to see if the relationship will be productive without too much time or commitment. Many Alphas first sign up with our service as individual Alphas. Many of them have never been involved with a technology project before as a trial user and want to start slow to understand what it is like. After they are contacted by a development company, they learn a bit more about what they can contribute and how much time and effort their participation will take. They can perhaps view a web-based demo and provide some feedback. If they like what they see, they may agree to involve other members of their organization and they may agree to become a Beta user for the project. Likewise, the development company can assess how responsive and communicative the Alpha user is and will strive to grow those relationships that turn out to be the most valuable. We strongly encourage our development project companies to increase the reward value when the relationship proves productive for them. Go to Top

My email has been down and I may have missed a project invitation. How do I find out and can I still accept it?

If you are an Alpha or Beta User, you can login to AlphaBeta Finder.com and see on your User Project screen whether you have been invited to any projects. You will have a status of "Invited" on your Project screen that is accessed from your User Home Page if this is the case. If you see on your Project screen that you were "Invited" that is, sent an email, you can click on that project to see your invitation regenerated from our database and can then respond to it using the Accept or Decline buttons. If the project status is "No Response," you were invited but did not respond before the expiration date or before 30 days (whichever comes first) and so are no longer eligible for this project. Go to Top

What does the Status column on the screens mean?

The Status column appears on several screens throughout AlphaBeta Finder.com for both developers and users. The possible Status values and their meanings are:

"Meet Requirements"--A developer has defined a test, recorded conditions needed to participate in the test, and requested a search of users who meet these requirements. This action produces a list of users with a status of "Meet Requirements." Users do not see this status nor can they access this screen. Developers can alter their selection conditions at any time, causing users to meet and unmeet requirements intermittently.

"Invited" - A developer has selected a user who meets the test requirements to be contacted by an email from AlphaBetaFinder to ask if that user is interested in participating in the test. The date next to the Invited status is the date the email was sent.

"Accepted" or "Declined" -- The user has received the invitation email from AlphaBetaFinder with details describing a testing project and has either replied "Yes, I am interested in participating in this project" and so receives a status of "Accepted" or "No, I am not interested in participating in this project" and so receives a status of "Declined." The date next to the Accepted or Declined status is the date the reply was received. Note that an Accepted status does not obligate a developer to contact the user for the test.

"Participating" -- A developer has purchased the email contact information of users with an Accepted status that he wants to follow up with for further testing information or arrangements. The user contact informationn is visible on the screen if the status is "Participating." The date next to the Participating status is the date the developer purchased the email contact information. After this point, AlphaBetaFinder is no longer involved in how the relationship progresses and so does not know if the developer actually followed through and contacted the users for testing. Developers may postpone or cancel their testing due to project changes.

"No Response" -- A user has not responded to an invitation by the expiration date. An expiration date is set by the developer when the email invitations are being requested. When a developer is sending invitations, the expiration date for that batch of invitations can be set at 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, or 30 days. If no expiration date is set, the default of 30 days will be applied by the AlphaBeta Finder system. Users who do not respond to an invitation by the expiration date are given this status. NOTE THAT AUTOMATIC RESENDS OF EMAIL INVITATIONS ARE PRODUCED BY THE SYSTEM AT THE HALFWAY MARK BEFORE THE EXPIRATION DATE. For instance, for a 30 day set of invitations, users are resent the invitation email at 15 days automatically. Users can also log in and see that they were sent an invitation and have No Response status and Accept or Decline that invitation right from their User Home Page. They cannot accept expired invitations regardless of how they access them.

"InActive" -- The user has logged in and manually changed his or her user status to Inactive. This prevents that user from turning up in searches or matches. The user must log back in and change the status to Active in order to resume participation in searches. Users would want to change to Inactive status when they are temporarily unavailable for tests, such as away from their computer on an extended vacation or too busy to devote time to testing. This prevents them from getting invitations temporarily until they are ready to particpate again. Users must manually change their status to Active when they are ready.

"InActive Configuration" The user has recorded a machine configuration but it is temporarily unavailable for tests. This status prevents the machine from turning up on searches for testing. The user can enter a date to automatically make the machine active at a time of his or her choice. The user can manually activate or inactivate machines as they become available. Go to Top

Why Do I Need to Access my Profile Every 6 Months?

The situations and availability of our registered users change frequently. Some of the computers you listed may be broken. You might be busy and know you won't be able to participate in any projects. You may be out of the country and not near your computer anymore. You might be between projects and can increase the time you have available for testing. For these and other reasons, we encourage our users to access their record and update it to keep it current. We try to make this as convenient and painless as possible by sending email reminders with your stored info so you can see at a glance what needs to be changed. If nothing is changed, you only need to click on the appropriate link in the email to have your profile stay active for another 6 months. If you want to cancel your participation permanently or inactivate your participation temporarily, you can do that from the email as well. Go to Top

Is There a Way to Temporarily Opt-Out but keep my information stored?

Yes, the fastest and most direct way to do this is to log in to your user account in AlphaBeta Finder.com and use the "Inactivate" option in your profile to set your profile to no longer be active. Your profile will no longer turn up in any searches for Alpha or Beta testing.

After you do this, you can go back in to re-activate your profile at any time. You will get email reminders from us every six months about the status of your profile.

Note that development projects do not need to de-activate their profile information because their information is not searchable. They can simply stop using our service or even delete their information at any time.

You can inactivate the following:

YOUR ENTIRE USER PROFILE--do this when you cannot participate in AlphaBeta Finder in any way temporarily. This means you do not want to get invitations to Alpha or Beta test.

A PARTICULAR MACHINE OR ALL MACHINE CONFIGURATIONS--do this when you still want to be available as an Alpha or Beta user but a computer or other configuration is not working so you do not want to offer it to searches. Perhaps you listed several machines but you are now going through a major upgrade and some of them are unavailable for several months.

Of course, you can modify or delete information in your entire profile at any time without inactivating it. For example, you can simply delete a computer configuration if you sell it or de-commission it. You would only inactivate information you store if you want to save it to re-use or activate it later. If you know information is never going to be valid or useful again, it is better to delete it. Go to Top

Let AlphaBeta Finder know about false or misleading users or projects

If you have good reason to believe an Alpha or Beta user has not been truthful or accurate in their profile or in some other way has broken our Terms of Use or our Privacy Agreement, contact us immediately at info@AlphaBetaFinder.com. We can and do remove users who do not follow the Terms of Use Agreement or our Privacy Agreement.

If you believe a development project company is trying to sell you their software or hardware instead of using you to Alpha and Beta test it as defined here, let us know immediately. You should not be asked to purchase the product you are Alpha or Beta testing, although once it is production, you might be notified in case you want to purchase it. Typically, Alphas and Betas are given the production ready software or hardware license for free or at a steep discount in gratitude for their help. You also should not be asked to work for free for the development company as a full-time tester. Full-time test is a professional job that should be paid for by the development company. We can and do enforce the Terms of Use Agreement with development companies.

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AlphaBeta Finder Glossary
  • Alpha -- A person or organization that provides early input into technology products.
  • Beta -- A person or organization that hands-on tries out new technology and provides feedback.
  • User -- Either an Alpha or Beta person or organization.
  • Developer -- A person, team, company, or organization that creates new technology.
  • Project -- The development and test phase of creating new hardware or software.
  • Test -- An activity that tries out the usage or features of a technology product.
  • Subscribe -- Creating a login account and password on the AlphaBeta Finder web site.
  • Register -- Creating a login account and password on the AlphaBeta Finder web site.
  • Login -- A valid email address.
  • Password -- Any combination of characters and numbers and special characters. Your password cannot be blank and is case sensitive.
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QUESTIONS ABOUT SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE DEVELOPMENT ALPHA AND BETA PHASES

Why are Alpha and Beta Phases Important?

New Software and Hardware Development is a high risk business. If you have been in the technology industry for even a short time, you already know of some spectacular failures -- releases that were so buggy they had to be recalled, companies whose reputations were ruined because of dysfunctional products, development teams that immediately had to scramble into another major release because guesses about what configurations or features to build were wrong, investments in millions of dollars that were lost because users did not want or value the product.

Alpha and Beta phases came about to forestall these disasters. Because development is a tedious, isolated process, nowadays often done offshore or with dispersed groups of developers, it is easier than you might think to end up with something that users will not buy or that competitors have already leap frogged.

It is now standard practice to try out software or hardware concepts, designs, and programs as often as possible, as early as possible. This strategy is universally accepted as key to producing high quality and market winning products. Many investors will demand concrete results from Alpha and Beta phases before they will invest further in your project. Many technology executives are specifically hired to spend their time nurturing contacts and soliciting feedback for this critical part of their company's success. Many products are not released for worldwide sale until a certain amount of initial feedback has been gathered. Most marketing organizations know that successful relationships with Alpha and Beta users grow into early adopter customers. Finding and qualifying predictive and informative real world end users is what AlphaBetaFinder does for its registered developers. Go to Top

What Is an Alpha Test Phase?

Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet and has taken on the following meanings when applied to software or hardware development:

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What is an Alpha Tester?

According to the official definitions above then, an Alpha Tester is most often one of the development originators of the software or hardware. So why would you sign up to be one of these if you are not part of the development team? Because development teams need to talk to and demo to potential real world users to ensure they have the design and function that is desireable and needed. Unless this check is done frequently and early, it may be that a company spends a great deal of money and time building a product that fails in the marketplace or is rejected by its users. An Alpha Tester for our service is a real world user who provides input on new technology.

Even though for our service we call them Alpha Users, other names are commonly used for these early contributors and finding these other types of contributors can be done by using our service such as:

  • Technical Advisor
  • Functional Advisor
  • Business Advisor or Consultant
  • Domain Expert
  • Functional Expert
  • Development Advisor
  • Development Partner
  • Early Adopter
  • Pre-production Customer

Also, in some cases, Alpha Users overlap with marketing terms such as Focus Groups or other targeted sessions with the objective of obtaining early stage feedback on a product or service. All of these terms designate users and organizations who are sought by early stage developers for input, insight, and feedback on their product. Each development company that uses our service to connect with Alpha Users is different: their project may be more or less complete, and they will be looking for feedback on different aspects, but most of them are looking for dependable, communicative persons and organizations who have the environment and experience to represent adequately the future user of their new product. Go to Top

What Are Alpha Users Asked to Do?

Alpha's provide input in the very early stages of the product, when it may not be feature complete, working properly, or formally tested. For these reasons, Alpha Users most often view and use software or hardware in a controlled situation, such as an online or web-based demo done by the developer. The purpose of an Alpha Phase though is not to find defects as much as to obtain information on the value, completeness, and usefulness of the design and function of the product. Alpha Phases are almost always managed directly by the designers and programmers. They are concerned with learning fundamental information about their new product, such as

  • Do users think it solves a problem, meets a need, provides entertainment, makes an activity more efficient, more accurate, less expensive, less boring?
  • Do users like the appearance and feel of using the product?
  • Is the product efficiently useful -- does it flow easily from one task or screen to the next as it is used to accomplish an action?
  • Is the product intuitive to use? How much training or documentation is needed for a user to figure out what to do with the product?
  • What functionality or features are missing from the product?
  • What is valuable about the product? and just how valuable is it? (this information helps a start-up company formulate pricing, licensing, and other decisions).

Alpha Users are often asked to fill out surveys and questionnaires to record their feedback. Go to Top

What is a Beta Test?

Beta is the second letter of the Greek Alphabet and in the classic development lifecycle refers to a secondary stage of testing new software or hardware after the unit and QA test by the development group.

Some official definitions of Beta Test are

  • Typically the last step in the testing of a product before it is officially released. A beta test is often conducted with customers in their offices. www.e-ratecentral.com/resources/help/glossary/b.asp
  • An external test of pre-production products. The purpose is to test the product for all functions in a breadth of field situations to find those system faults that are more likely to show in actual use than in the firm's more controlled in-house tests before sale to the general market. www.pdmamn.org/glossary.htm
  • A computer program is in beta test when its developers have mostly finished but are looking for help from trial users to find bugs and problems before the final, commercial version is issued. www.techwriter.co.nz/nerd-ad.html
  • Second stage testing performed by dependable customers who volunteer to use a product and report any problems, before the product is actually released. www.usr.com/education/broadbandglossary.asp
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What is a Beta Tester?

Beta Testers are real world users of new software or hardware that is fairly complete and operational. The primary difference between an Alpha User and a Beta User is that the Alpha User represents future users but does not actually use the new product while a Beta User is hands-on with the new product. Go to Top

What is a Beta User Asked to Do?

A beta phase is most productive and useful with as diverse a group of beta users as the product is likely to encounter in the real world. For most software or hardware being developed nowadays, this is a complexity of user backgrounds from novices to supreme experts and a dizzying array of machine environments with different chip sets, operating systems, databases, browsers, and other co-existing software applications.

Sometimes a beta project company may ask that participants report to a test lab for more formal test sessions or focus groups. If this occurs, your travel expenses and other compensation is an arrangement made between you and project company.

But most often, you are asked to provide a few hours using the product remotely from your own location at a day and time convenient for you.

It is not unusual to need many beta testers simply because of the number of combinations of hardware and software possible. It is not unusual to have multiple beta phases over time as the product is improved from feedback and defect detection of the earlier beta phases. Beta testing varies greatly but may include some of the following activities:

  • User reactions to the look and feel of levers, switches, screens, colors, menus, logos, icons, toolbars, buttons
  • Workflow reactions to the steps involved in performing an activity with the product
  • Intuition and training complexity feedback -- how hard or inituitive is it to use the product without training or without reading documentation
  • Positive or negative reactions to the product use
  • Response time of the software or hardware
  • Volume, load, stress timings and benchmarking of the product
  • Installation ease of the product
  • Usefulness and effectiveness of product's help system or documentation
  • New or untrained user reaction to the product
  • Trained or expert user reaction to the product
  • Reporting on defects or problems verbally or in writing
  • Using a product that has been translated to a new language that you are proficient in
  • Participating in phone or onsite interviews about the product
  • Having the usage session recorded for later feedback or analysis
  • Being interviewed by different members of the development company, such as marketing and sales staff, executive staff or technical staff for different types of feedback
  • Your opinion on how stable and production ready the product is
  • Your opinion on the value or benefits of the product
  • Filling out surveys and questionnaires about the product
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Why do you keep emphasizing that Alpha Users should NOT be Hands-on with our product?

Because a true Alpha phase occurs when a product is not yet fully featured or fully functional, it is inappropriate and dangerous to ask Alpha contacts to hands-on test or use your new product during this phase. It is risky to their computing environment and can lead to their coming back to you to uncorrupt their machine or reinstall their original configuration.

In addition, no matter how downward you drive their expectations, most real end users will still have negative reactions to your product if it crashes constantly, dead ends, or looks and feels unsophisticated. Therefore, it is much much wiser for your feedback purposes to strictly control, orchestrate, script, and demo software and hardware that is not mature enough for a positive trial use experience.

Most Alpha interactions can and should involve demoing the product according to a pre-tested scenario directly by its developers to the Alpha users. The product will already be installed, configured and working before the demo. A series of interview questions has been gathered, the spokesperson and demoers arranged, and the objectives for the feedback have been communicated to all involved. If you plan ever to ask your Alphas to genuinely pay money for your product, do not ad lib your way through the session. Go to Top

What is the Difference Between an Alpha or a Beta and a QA Tester?

There is a signifcant difference between Alphas/Betas and QA/Quality Assurance Testers!

Both Alpha and Beta testers differ from Quality Assurance or QA Testers in that the Alpha and Beta testers are primarily prospective USERS of the product. By contrast, a QA Tester is most often a technical employee of the development company who is hired to rigorously test the product in a scientific and methodic way. QA testers are trained to exercise software or hardware according to a structured plan that they devise. They specialize in documenting and duplicating scenarios that find and reproduce product defects as part of an overall effort to stabilize and correct the product. Most QA testers are very technical -- they write scripts to simulate volume and other stress loads, they use sophisticated test harnesses that they create to find and record defects, and they set up QA labs with multiple configurations, versions, and releases to be able to backwards and forwards test. They know and apply words such as white box test, regression test, load test, UI test, sequence test, works as spec'ed, and cannot be duplicated. QA testers use controlled environments, that is, test labs, with as few variables as possible, so that they can scientifically perform their work. They know a great deal about the product and its development and in most cases, should not be considered unbiased users.

Alpha and Beta testers usually are not trained formally as testers. Their untrained, unbiased reaction and usage of the product is key to producing the real world environment that the product will eventually be released into. This real world environment is filled with variables from hardware and other software and from the varying skills and perceptions of the users. Having Alpha and Beta testers allows developers to duplicate these real world situations so that they can design, code, and harden their product to meet real world conditions.

AlphaBeta Finder is not a QA recruiting or employment service and if this is your primary interest, there are many job sites that can help you find or become a QA resource. AlphaBeta Finder screens its development companies to ensure they are utilizing our service to find willing Alpha and Beta test users in the real world. The Terms of Use for our service require that a company with a development project does not solicit our registered users as substitutes for QA testing or for any other purpose except Alpha and Beta testing as defined here. Go to Top

Should Alphas and Betas Fill Out Bug Reports?

Do not expect Alpha users to fill out bug reports. Ask Beta Users to fill out bug reports only if they have the technical skills to do it well. Getting loads of false or badly documented bug reports will not help your development process.

Alpha products are in unit test according to the official definition of Alpha; therefore, you should not expect Alpha users to fill out bug reports that describe error messages and steps to reproduce them. Your own developers should be doing this in the unit test phase.

In the Beta phase, particularly a late-stage Beta phase just before a production release, you can ask qualified Beta users to fill out bug reports. You are much more likely to get them to do this however if you automate this as much as possible by inserting links in your product to bring up report forms or email them forms that step them through the info you want such as the build number or what screen they were on. Of course you also need to use an automated troubleticket system such as open source Mantis (http://www.mantisbt.org/) so that the error reports are stored and tracked.

It is especially important for future relationships that you follow up on any error reports contributed by your Betas and let them know the problem has been corrected. Otherwise, their word of mouth afterwards can only say that your product was buggy.

As part of the test automation, you can and should build your software or hardware so that it automatically captures the release, build number, and environment settings or files (such as trace files of database configurations, input and output messages). If you do not have a development culture where simulation engines, detailed program execution logging, and unit test automation are a routine part of your normal development cycle, you can expect your Beta phase to be long and difficult because you do not have a process that allows regression testing and progressive improvement.

If your development cycle is chaotic and makes progress through heroics, expect an Alpha and Beta phase that mimics this. It is up to your development organization to set up the procedures for smooth feedback and the mechanics of a release process that incorporates that feedback. Go to Top

What About Software and Hardware Licensing?

Development project companies and Alpha and Beta users should work together to understand and comply with licensing. Software and hardware licensing is so complex and varied that we hesitate to give advice, but here are some general guidelines. Keep in mind that all software and hardware, even open-source, is licensed, most are copy righted, and AlphaBeta Finder cannot be responsible for compliance or non-compliance or interpretation regarding licensing among our users.

  • If you are a user who is providing a computer or test environment, make sure your licenses allow it. In most cases, you can use your licensed software to test other software. For example, you can usually use your database license to install another database instance with which to test new software with as long as you are within the number of instance limits. You can usually use a computer you have purchased or leased to install and test any software you want. You can usually use the computer's operating system and other components such as browsers to install and test any software you want.
  • You can usually provide your data that is stored or rendered from a software application to a software project team. For instance if you are testing a new insurance application and have your insurance rates stored in a software application developed by another vendor, you can extract your rate information and provide it to the new software team under most license agreements.
  • Almost all software licenses prohibit you as a user from allowing others to backwards engineer licensed software from a different company. Again, we cannot interpret the world of software licenses but usually this means you cannot provide screens, database files, programs, or other parts of a vendor's software to another software vendor who is intent on copying or duplicating it.
  • Many but not all software licenses prohibit you to give a vendor's software documentation to a non-licensed user.
  • Open source, trial use, demo use, or temporary use software or hardware usually have license requirements similar to the ones above. There are so many variations among these types of licenses that they must be separately reviewed if the product they govern is involved in a test.
All of those who interact to help use or test software or hardware should be aware that there are laws against causing someone to break his product licenses. Many development projects include the cost and distribution of licenses they need for their product to work as part of their Alpha and Beta budget and packaging.

Although all of this may sound complex, highly competitive, exceptionally similar software and hardware is developed, tested, and released every day. And it is primarily through the direction and feedback of Alpha and Beta users that this happens. Users can explain in detail what they want and what they like to any development team. Go to Top

QUESTIONS THAT ALPHA AND BETA USERS AND ORGANIZATIONS ASK

What steps are involved in using your web service as an Alpha or Beta user or organizations

The steps are easy, convenient, and completely free for Alpha and Beta users or organizations. They are:

1. Create your login and password on our site.

2. Enter information about your business skills, computer skills, software usage, computer and device configurations. This takes about 20 minutes -- the more information you record the more searches you will match. You need complete only one profile to serve for all testing opportunities.

3. Wait to receive email invitations from us describing development projects that selected you from our database. The email will describe any compensation attached to participation.

4. Answer our email invitation with an Accept or Decline to participate.

5. Wait to receive further emails from the development organization with further participation arrangements. You can turn down the invitation at any time.

6. To stay available for searches, access your profile on our site at least once every 6 months.

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Why would I register my organization as an Alpha or Beta?

You would register an organization only if you have the authority to commit it, but if you do, you represent the most desireable type of user our service offers. Organizations are harder to enlist as Alphas or Betas because they are necessarily focused on their own business objectives and have limited time and resources for testing. Go to Top

So why would an organization enroll in AlphaBeta Finder?

If you are a business or organization that has a close match of the right business type and technical configuration coupled with the organizational culture to be a responsive and responsible test participant, you can obtain recognition, influence, and in most cases, sizeable compensation for your organization. Remember you do not necessarily have to provide test environments; you can enroll only as an Alpha and help mold future technology to meet your business's needs.

Do you have computer equipment or even personnel that are not being used or not being used to their full potential? You can put these extra cycles to good use and get some advanced training on what's to come. Are you looking to partner with a development team that will really listen to you about what your business needs in technology? You can use our service to obtain innovative products that you can shape for your future. Are you a business in a new field and you can't find good software or hardware to fit you? You can obtain win/win partnering arrangements with progressive vendors. Is your role in your organization to seek out new technologies or develop technology strategy? Joining AlphaBeta Finder can help you in your career by introducing you to the emerging vendors. Is your company a thought leader, innovator, or strongly believes that better technology is the best way to compete? AlphaBeta Finder participation will improve your knowledge base and direct experience about technology in your industry. In many cases, you will meet vendors and projects well before they reach the market. Your inside track about what is coming and the very best support and training in how to use it may be a business advantage you want. Go to Top

Should I Offer My Computers as Test Environments?

Yes. Most modern software being developed today is packaged as a VM/Virtual Machine. This means it runs in an isolated partition on your computer and does not affect your other partitions or software if something goes wrong. It also is one of the easier types of software packages to install and most development groups can install it for you remotely to save you time. Many other technical products are offered as appliances and therefore come as a bundle of hardware and software. In this case, you may be asked to connect the appliance to your test network.

Of course, if the project is trying to Beta test their install itself, this type of episode is unlikely. Rather, they will be asking you to use your computing environment and will be asking you to install it, so your risk is higher in such a case. Never offer to install something on your computer without talking directly to knowledgeable and responsible developers of the product about what risks there are. Ask if they have installed it before, ask what environments they have installed it on, ask if it has an automated install program and ask especially if it has an uninstall program. Ask what their contingency plans are if the software installs improperly or if it corrupts your environment in some way. Make sure they are responsive and trustworthy about supporting you and your configuration or do not agree to test with them. You do not have to agree to work with anyone who seems to be trying to take advantage of your good will. Go to Top

I have lots of older, but operational computer machines--should I offer these to Alpha and Beta test?

Definitely. If your computers are working and licensed, they are of extremely high value to development projects. Go to Top

My computers are obsolete. Should I bother to record them for projects?

If you have licensed, operational hardware or software that is rare, retired, sunsetted, obsolete, or even no longer supported by its original manufacturer, you may be of great value to development teams who are in a situation where they need to build and support products for such environments. This is especially true for high-end computing environments such as older mainframes or rarities such as Himalayas or OS/2. If you are no longer using these machines, why not at least earn a nice reward by using them for Beta testing? In some cases, the original vendor no longer sells or even supports the hardware/software, but customers still legitimately have it and run it. A development team may be intentionally building products for this situation, but it may be difficult to obtain all the releases and versions to test with. These teams will be actively seeking you. Also, the team developing the new product may not be well versed in how that environment runs or operates, making your experience very valuable to them. Further, many development teams cannot afford to purchase the more rare machines nor can they find or afford the training to install and maintain them. They often cannot purchase for any amount of money obsolete configurations and yet they might need to be selling to these configurations. You can imagine how valuable someone with working versions of these hard to find configurations would be for development teams and how much they would relying on your help. It costs many thousands of dollars to build a modern computing lab with multiple computers, operating systems, databases, and chips. By virtue of the fact that you are saving them so much money, development project teams should be very grateful and supportive of you if you can offer them older computers, especially those that are difficult to find. Go to Top

I've never tested software or hardware--should I get involved in AlphaBeta Finder?

YES. First of all--YOU ARE NOT A TESTER. YOU ARE INSTEAD A "USER." And this means that you are someone whose skills, experience, or machine configuration represents a future user of the product. And most of those future users are probably not experienced testers either. So your lack of testing experience is an advantage for development projects.

Second of all, you would be surprised how far afield developers can get on how their product interacts with a novice user. Development teams work on their project in many cases for years and in many cases in stealth mode. They get more and more insolated from real world users. Your fresh perspective and lack of context is exactly what most projects need. Go to Top

I'm motivated mostly by the reward--how do I negotiate for something good?

We strongly urge all our development companies to reward their Alpha and Beta users. You will see at a glance if a reward is offered and what it is when you see project details in an email from us when you match the requirements of a development project. You can reject any projects that do not carry a reward you consider worth your time.

One way to be eligible for good rewards is to spend time in your AlphaBeta Finder User Profile putting in details about your skills, experience, and machine configurations. Rewards are usually geared to the rareness or uniqueness of the skill required to use the new product and to the number and expense of the machines offered for test environments. If you have 5 AIX machines to test enterprise software with, your value to the software project is high and your reward should be scaled accordingly. If you are a CPA and familiar with dozens of financial software packages, your value is high to some development projects and your reward should reflect that. If you have your personal laptop with Windows and a browser and do not record any particular skills or software experience for companies to select on, your value to the development project is less because of the sheer number of similar participants, and you will therefore be competing with many other AlphaBeta Finder participants who have that same environment for that development project.

The best way to obtain a good reward after you are selected for a project is to be a highly responsive, communicative, and detailed Alpha and Beta participant. Write down your reactions and issues in emails, be clear and sequential about what happened when you used the product. Take notes during your usage sessions so you can provide concrete information. The more insightful your feedback is, the more the development team should strive to win your continued time and effort with a reward.

If you can honestly endorse the new product, offer to participate in testimonials, references, customer stories. These activities are of huge value to new products, and they should endeavor to show their appreciation with a suitable reward. Go to Top

What Qualities are Looked for in an Alpha User?

Characteristics that make the very best Alpha users are being proactive and responsive.

Furher, a desireable Alpha User is someone who would potentially use the product if it were more mature. He or she is already familiar with similar functions that the new product is providing-- either by doing it manually or with other products.

The more familiar an Alpha User is technically with the intended hardware and software environment of the test product the better. This allows the Alpha User to provide more precise feedback, such as what computer configuration combinations are most common or most useful. Development groups often need this information in order to prioritize the environments they will support. A simple example is should the new software be built to run on Windows, Linux, or both?

Good Alpha Users and Organizations often have a close match with the business or functional environment of the product's intended market. For example, soliciting feedback from nurses, physicians, physical therapists, medical billing clerks, and hospital administrators would be critical if you were developing a new hospital medical records system. The more information you enter into your profile about your background and experience, the more valuable you become and your reward or compensation should go up accordingly.

Note however that while Alpha Users and Organizations may know how to use similar products, it is unlikely that an Alpha participant will be asked to install or directly use the Alpha product. Usually, Alpha products are not stable or consistent enough to be used by external users. Because of the high risk to the environments of users when the product is in this stage, most developers control the release by demoing it or at least installing it themselves in an isolated test environment for the Alpha User Review.

It is the second stage, Beta, where external users are actively sought to use the new product. Go to Top

What is Required for Me to Be an Alpha or Beta User?

You need to sign up and then store your profile about your computing environment and skills on this website (www.alphabetafinder.com). You do not need a technical background to participate and no prior testing experienced is required! Although many of our participants are technical professionals between jobs or looking to gain technical experience with new technology, you do not have to be a professional or experienced QA or Software or Hardware Tester to sign up for AlphaBeta participation. In fact, you may be more desireable if you have no experience! Development vendors are often looking for untrained, fresh users to test usability or the intuitiveness of their product's workflow and features.

Other requirements are:

  • You must be at least 18 years of age but can live in any country and speak any language, although for now the AlphaBeta Finder web site and service is produced only in English and its users speak and write primarily in English.
  • You do need to be willing and able to use your own computer at least for connection to the test product or authorized by your employer to use the one in your office.
  • You will need broadband Internet access from this computer in order to participate in the testing.
  • You do need to commit to the minimum time the vendor requests for the testing and agree to provide input to the vendor in some cases in written form, in other cases through phone interviews or through web sessions.
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How dangerous is this product going to be to my computer? Could it damage my computer?

Alpha and Beta phase software or hardware is in pre-release or pre-production and so is not fully debugged and stable -- that is why it is called an Alpha and Beta project. No one, not even the originators of the project, can tell you exactly what it might do. Therefore the new product may cause problems on your computer, and this is a risk you need to be aware of and agree to. Be sure you only store on the AlphaBeta web site profiles on computers that you can volunteer for this situation. Be sure you practice safe computing and have a firewall or other protection from the hazards of the public Internet and back up your computer regularly.

However, today's technology makes using early stage software or hardware safer than before. One safety measure is to request of the project team that you obtain their Alpha or Beta release as a VM (virtual machine) if at all possible. This is where the team packages up the software and configuration and provides it to you either on a CD on as a download. While a VM is often very large (5 to 10 gigabytes is not uncommon), it is safe in that the environment is isolated. A crash within the new software may corrupt or damage something, but it will be restricted to only the VM itself. Another advantage of VM's is that they greatly reduce installation complexities. Alpha and Beta software may not have an install program and so may have to be hand installed. Some software requires complex environments such as databases with particular settings. The vendor can reduce effort for themselves and you by loading and configuring this at their site, packaging it as a VM, and providing it to you as a downloadable URL. Both you and the software vendor should be aware that VM licensing and licensing rules by application vendors apply to virtual machine environments.

Another way to reduce your risk is asking that the software or hardware they want your feedback on be hosted at their site or at their hosting service. They provide you with log-in information, and you try out the product without affecting your own computer other than as a connection.

A third way to minimize your risk is to use a webinar, web meeting, or terminal service to access the product from the vendor. This allows you to access the product from your keyboard but run it on a machine provided by the vendor. This is useful for demos and other types of trial runs, but these arrangements make response slow, so if speed or high volume of data or activity is the being tested, it is not a useful environment. Go to Top

What Will I Be Asked To Do?

What you will be asked to do in order to provide feedback on the product varies according to the project's needs. Sometimes you will be given instructions to navigate through a particular feature and sometimes you will be given no instructions and can play with the product as you'd like. Some development companies may ask you to fill out a post test questionnaire, some may want to record your usage session to playback later for insight into navigation and other features, some may ask you to fill out error reports if you run into a problem. If you are really communicative and helpful, you may be asked to participate in a testimonial, user webinar, or other collaboration by the vendor but this is completely up to you and the development company.

In a few cases, sometimes a beta phase company may ask that participants report to a test lab for more formal test sessions or focus groups. If this occurs, your travel expenses and other compensation is an arrangement made between you and product vendor.

But most often, you are asked to provide a few hours of your time using the product remotely from your own home at a day and time convenient for you. You fill out an online AlphaBeta profile that informs project companies of the configuration of the computer and software you already have, foreign languages you know, your proficiency at various tasks such as web surfing, manipulating graphics, gaming, and any functional knowledge of specific industries such as banking, telecommunications, or healthcare.

Development companies use our service to search our database and contact us if you meet their qualifications. We in turn contact you, describe what is involved in the testing and ask if you want to participate in that project. The project company can then decide if they want to contact you for participating in their Alpha or Beta Phase. The project company then contacts you to provide more information and make any additional arrangements for obtaining the test product, test directions, schedules, and what compensation is available.

Until you have agreed to take on test activity for a company, we protect your contact identity. Go to Top

What If I Am Asked to be a Free QA Tester?

We actively discourage our development companies from doing this through our Terms of Use. QA testing of software or hardware is a real job that requires training, skill, and dedication. It should be compensated. It is not the purpose of AlphaBeta Finder to allow companies to use our participants as free QA resources or take advantage of their personal computers as free QA labs. The purpose of Alpha and Beta testing is to obtain and use real world feedback from real world users. But this line is grey and subjectively interpreted by nearly everyone involved. This is why we carefully define Alpha and Beta testing on our site. But even with these definitions, interpretations among the parties vary and change as the testing occurs.

You can and should obtain as much information from the project company about what you will be asked to do before you agree to provide input. If the arrangement starts to change, you can and should inform the development company that a discussion and possible renegotiation is in order. If you feel they are over the line and trying to take advantage of you, let us know and if your information is reasonable, we will at least drop them from our service. Unless you signed some sort of binding agreement with the development company, you should be under no obligation to continue working with them. Go to Top

What Happens After the Alpha or Beta Test?

After you try out the product, your feedback is desired. The product vendor will set this up in a way appropriate to them, but typical examples are

  • Interviews by phone or at a designated site
  • Surveys or questionnaires
  • Web meetings

Of course, if you really provided value to the development team, they might be calling on you to extend the relationship with testimonials, demo participation, or travel to help with presentations. These arrangements are between you and development company but compensation for these activities is definitely in order. Go to Top

QUESTIONS OFTEN ASKED BY DEVELOPMENT PROJECT COMPANIES

What Steps are Involved in being a Developer using your AlphaBetaFinder web site?

The Steps to be a Developer are easy, convenient, confidential, and completely under your control. They are:

1. Create your login and password on our site.

2. Enter information about your project including its duration and any reward for testing, describe the tests you are looking for, choose the business background, languages, software, machines, and network requirements you might have. This takes about 20 minutes -- the more information you record the more relevant your matches will be.

3. At any time, conduct searches of our volunteer Alpha and Beta profiles that match your requirements. You can change your requirements if you are not getting the results you want. You can save your results and come back later. You can create additional projects, tests, searches, and save the results.

4. At any time, go to your search results and click on the profiles that turned up to have us send them emails to ask them to participate. There is a modest charge for each email we send for you. You do not have the direct contact identities of these profiles at this time.

5. At any time after we send the emails for you, return to the search screen to check the results. You will see an "Accept" status next to any profile that agreed to participate and a "Declined" status next to any profile that declined to participate. You might want to check the screen several times over the course of a few weeks to give people time to respond. If you are not getting enough responses, you can add to or create additional tests and searches. We automatically send the invitation twice for you--once immediately after you request the invitations and a second time at the halfway mark. There is no additional charge for this resend but it greatly increases the response rate. Many people do not respond until they get that second email.

6. At any time, you can click on profiles with an "Accepted" status to have us email you with contact information on those profiles. There is an additional charge for each contact you request.

7. You can then contact your Alpha and Beta testers as you see fit to make test arrangements. You can further screen them, you can arrange for them to install your product, or you can simply notify them that you may contact them in the future. It is up to you to continue or maintain the relationship after this point.

8. You can recheck your Project screen as often as you need to see if additional users have accepted or to modify searches and fish for additional users.

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Recognize and Reward your Alphas and Betas

You are most strongly encouraged to reward Alpha and Betas for their contribution to your development. Development organizations that list at least some reward, however modest, for Alpha and Beta participants have a much better success in recruiting them and get higher quality feedback.

As a general rule, the value of the reward should increase if you are asking for significant time--that is, more than 2 or 3 hours a week or if you are hunting for rare combinations of skills--an airline pilot who knows C++ for instance. Another general rule is you should come up with a more corporate-style reward, such as a corporate gift basket of gourmet foods, for Alphas and Betas that are organizations as opposed to Alphas and Betas that are individuals. Participants who provide rare or high-end computing configurations such as z/OS or SAP most definitely should be well rewarded. The minimal reward in these situations is a free product from the development company, lots of free premier technical support, with at least a few special product features thrown in that make the user's life better.

If you are developing consumer software, such as an online retail catalog, you likely need lower skills but more numerous Alphas and Betas to simulate the diverse population you will eventually be selling to. Your reward can be quite modest in this case, such as a $20 online gift certificate. If you are developing a high-end enterprise product, such as a mainframe statistical analysis package, you will be searching for rare skills and environments and your reward should be much more valuable.

Try to make your reward itself, however inexpensive it is, as business-like as possible. That is, for the same amount as a toy or other tchotchke, you can give a $10 gift certificate to Amazon.com. You would do this to elicit a professional and responsible interaction with your Alphas and Betas, even if your product is entertainment or games. This is because it is much more fruitful for you if your Alphas and Betas treat your project with respect. Do everything you can to dispel a cavalier attitude in your Alphas and Betas so that they take your project seriously. The reward you select will go far to influence them in their attitude towards your project.

There is a fine line that you should not cross between recognizing and appreciating your Alphas and Betas and bribing them. We do not recommend giving them excessive gifts that are out of keeping with the intended segment or price point of your product. It will not elicit truthful, honest feedback. For instance, if your product is going to be open-source, very modest rewards are in order such as small gift certificates to online stores. If your product is going to be sold for millions of dollars to Fortune 500 corporations, the Alpha or Beta incentive reward should be structured and formal, such as a weekend at a resort.

Tried and true Alpha and Beta incentives that work in most cases are in the form of free trips or entertainment. If travel is part of your reward, hosting Alphas and Betas for dinners, golf, or sporting events are effective. If you have a high number of these users, entering them into a pool or drawing for a free trip or the latest electronic gadget is an inexpensive way to motivate them.

It is not unusual for Alphas and Betas to be compensated for their time with "honorariums," that is, with money, especially if your project requires considerable time from them or because you are looking for rare or unique backgrounds or configurations. These arrangements are subject to the applicable tax and labor laws of course. In the United States, most businesses can compensate trial users up to $600 without undue tax filings and other paperwork. We do not claim to be accountants or labor advisors, so please check out your compliance with applicable regulations.

Rewards can be multiple and timed for particular goals. Betas who stick with you for months should be rewarded throughout the project to keep them interested. Alphas and Betas who repeatedly participate with you should be rewarded more frequently. Modest but celebratory rewards when your project finally moves from Alpha to Beta to General Release are a good idea.

We hope it is common sense, but we will say it anyway--NEVER GIVE OUT THE REWARD UNTIL THE ALPHA OR BETA HAS PERFORMED YOUR PROJECT TASK ACCORDING TO YOUR SATISFACTION. Go to Top

What Should We Do About Confidentiality and Intellectual Property?

Be very, very concerned about non-disclosures, non-competes, and intellectual property with any Alpha or Beta user or organization.

AlphaBetaFinder cannot verify the truthfulness and accuracy of the information registered users record in their profiles, even though our Terms of Use Agreement pledges them to represent themselves honestly.

It is up to you and your organization to interview and check a prospective Alpha or Beta user as someone you trust to safeguard your confidentiality and trade secrets. Before you finalize arrangements for Alphas and Betas to work with your product, know who your competitors are and ask if the Alpha or Beta prospect is affiliated with them. Also ask your Alpha and Beta prospects if they are under non-competes or other contracts that would prevent them from providing feedback. In addition, ask them if they are currently employed in a situation or contractually obligated from a prior situation that would cause a conflict of interest, such as being an employee of a competitor or a consultant whose organization is subcontracted to a competitor.

An organization that serves as an Alpha or Beta for you is most likely already or formerly a customer of one of your competitors. While this experience makes them a desireable tester for you, make sure they know that your information is confidential. In stealth mode cases, you might want to make even the relationship confidential; that is, if you do not want your Alpha and Betas mentioning to your competitors that you even exist, make sure you communicate this.

If you are serving as an Alpha or Beta and are asked to reveal information about your company or products or about other vendors or the vendor's software, be sure you know what your current and past employers allow and what your vendor agreements allow. Go to Top

Do We Need a Non-Disclosure?

Yes, we highly recommend it. A Non-Disclosure Agreement or NDA is a legal contract that binds Alphas and Betas to keep information about your product confidential. If you do not have a non-disclosure agreement, you can obtain one for very little money from www.LegalZoom.com (affiliate link here). There are also samples of these agreements online for free if you do a search on "non-disclosure agreement." Go to Top

Do We Need an Alpha or Beta Agreement?

Yes, we highly recommend it, for both sides of the arrangement--for the sake of the product development company and the Alpha and Beta users. It is much wiser for your relationship and future good will if the parties have a written agreement that spells out what is to be done, how much time is being asked for, who the mutual contacts are, and so on. Conveniently, the profile of information entered on our AlphaBetaFinder site describing a development project makes it easy to re-use this information for the Alpha or Beta Agreement. This information is repeated in our emails requesting Alphas and Betas so these participants already have expectations set about what arrangements are being made.

Alpha and Beta Agreements should be simple and helpful in tone because Alphas and Betas are most often volunteers, so burdening them with onerous contracts that cause them to hire a lawyer before they are comfortable signing something is not going to help you enlist them. Again, an online search for Alpha and Beta agreements will turn up dozens of good samples for you. Go to Top

How Else Should Trade Secrets and Confidentiality be Safeguarded?

Document Alphas' and Betas' answers to your "getting to know you" questions and retain them. Verbalize that you consider confidentiality important and tell them if your project involves trade secrets that should be kept confidential. Do not assume that by interviewing one person at an Alpha or Beta organization, all employees you may deal with at that organization know and understand the desired interaction. Even if you have a signed agreement, it is highly unlikely that every employee at an Alpha or Beta organization has seen it. Repeat your confidentiality request to everyone you interact with.

During your conversation with an Alpha or Beta, do a bit of name dropping to try to learn if they really are who they say they are. After you talk to them, online search on their name, check out sources such as www.linkedin.com and industry contacts to do what you can to verify their expertise and background. If they are an independent consultant, be particularly careful to check if they might have been hired or encouraged to use your product to gain competitive intelligence. If you suspect this, ask them point blank if they have any arrangement of this nature.

Never tell an Alpha or Beta user any more about about your business, your products, or your other contacts unless you specifically have to as part of the feedback exchange.

Make sure the other employees at your company who might come in contact with Alpha and Beta users know the basics about intellectual property, trade secrets, and confidentiality. If you are a start-up project and thinking of patenting your product, make sure patent requirements about what can be shared at this stage are communicated to the software team. Go to Top

What's Allowed if We want to Hire or Contract with an Alpha or Beta We meet through your Service?

If one or two Alpha or Beta contacts you obtain through our service are of such caliber that you want to use them as domain experts of some duration or time, you can negotiate with them to contract with or even hire them. However, if you use our service primarily as a recruiting or sales tool and not to connect up Alpha and Beta users and software/hardware projects, it is a violation of our Terms of Use.

It is a very good idea to try out Alphas and Betas first with a few brief sessions or interactions to ensure they are indeed the experts you need before you bring up longer arrangements. Ending each session with a "May we contact you again" type of question is helpful. Go to Top

What Type of Tests are Good for Alphas and Betas?

Any test that represents something a real world user might do is a good Alpha or Beta test. Some examples are

1. NOVICE USER EXPERIENCE--set a Beta user down with your product without prior training and see how they discover what to do. Most development teams find this to be a real eye-opening experience.

2. INTUITIVE USE--set a Beta user down with your product without prior training and ask them to accomplish a particular task.

3. NAVIGATION OR WORKFLOW EFFICIENCY--provide a Beta user with a task scenario and get feedback and metrics on how efficient or difficult it is--do they have to use too many screens, can they go back and forth with information retained, what if they want to stop or cancel, what if they want to edit prior information, what if they re-access their information from a different computer?

4. CONFIGURATION TESTS--if your product needs to work with multiple OS'es, databases, browsers, and devices, the best way to test is to provide a very precise, detailed test scenario, automated if at all possible, that beta users can then simply run on their various configurations. When you build your test scenario, elminate as many variables in usage as possible so that only the configuration is being tested. Completely automating this is by far the best way to accomplish it. Automate not only the test, but also the capture of all execs, timings, and output so that you can compare them for each configuration.

5. SPEED AND VOLUME TESTS--in order to eliminate user differences, try to create an automated test for these types of activities. You would then be seeking Betas only to acquire different machine types and not to acquire different user backgrounds or skills.

6. EXPERT USER TEST--set an expert user down with your product without prior training and see how they discover what to do. If you are testing gaming software, enlist experienced gamers to gauge their mastery of your program. Similarly, if you are testing accounting software, enlist CPA's to make sure that it is at an appropriate level for its intended user. Expert users tend to want short cuts and rapidity in the software. Speed features should be tested by these users.

7. LANGUAGE TEST--for products newly translated into another language, such as an English language web site translated into Spanish, enlist users fluent in the language to check the accuracy and especially the context and cultural sensitivity of the translation. Unfortunately, anecdotes about how damaging a poor translation is to a product being introduced in a new language, country, or culture abound. Enlist a diversity of users in the new language to sit down and use your newly translated product to ensure you are communicating appropriately. Go to Top

WHAT ARE SOME BEST PRACTICES DEVELOPERS SHOULD USE FOR ALPHA AND BETA PHASES?

Below is a quick tutorial based on our decades in creating and managing Alpha and Beta Phases for Development Companies.

Divide your Alphas and Betas into Multiple Searches and Store the Searches Separately

Make sure you use the AlphaBeta Finder site to your advantage, particularly if you plan to contact many participants or have many phases. Remember that it costs nothing to search and store your searches on our site. And when you do send invitations, their price is the same regardless of which test or project. If you have a matrix of machine configurations to test with Betas, it helps to organize each machine variation as a separate stored search in AlphaBeta Finder. For example, create and store one search for Windows users and a separate one for Linux users. To keep your users straight, make sure you check the Search Results screen so that you see how many other tests a particular user is involved with and how many other projects. This allows you to pick and choose whether to invite users who are already testing with your project to a separate or new test with the same or a different project.

Also, create and store your Alpha searches separate from your Beta searches. This division allows you to conduct more targeted and organized communications with them--for example, you can phrase a survey question to them about release 999.99 and can store their feedback with more information about their skills, backgrounds, and configurations. Go to Top

Why the C-level Approach Should be Avoided for Betas

One of the most common mistakes in Beta relationships is that development organizations, probably due to their internal pressure for future sales, go after C-level executives to be Betas. The executive then pushes down into his or her organization to command an employee to make time to test with you. This is often the wrong route to a useful feedback session. It is much better to directly contact the hands-on users for Beta participation and use alternative means and inducements to contact C-level executives.

The most successful and supportive Beta is someone who offers his time and machine through his own interest and volition, not because his boss made him. A Beta with a passion and dedication to the niche your product fills, such as data analysis, video streaming, or whatever, is by far the best. Making a few concessions to attract and engage a Beta of this type is usually worthwhile.

Your own marketing department may be convinced that C-level Alpha and Betas are very important because they can recommend the new product to other C-level decision makers. This is true of established development organizations with mature products. It is not true of young products from unknown companies. The CEO of a Fortune 500 may be convinced to purchase your fledgling product, but he would be a fool to take the word of another CEO on it if it is truly new and innovative. If he has any competence he will want to speak to a real user, particularly of a young, unproven product that does not have a field reputation. Your key to C-level access is therefore honing your quality and reputation with hands-on users. Go to Top

Alpha and Betas Phases Need a Project Plan

An Alpha or Beta Phase is complicated and involves many steps. Develop a project plan. At a minimum, this plan should cover:

  • Types of feedback desired, types of interactions, ways to record information, analysis methods and reports you will produce. For much of this, you should re-use the project info entered into the AlphaBeta Finder Project Profile. This data covers a description of test scenarios, duration of tests, amount of time requested from participants, and configuration information.
  • Alpha and Beta contact info, results of making those contacts, schedule of phases and sessions within phases, reward/compensation arrangements with Alphas and Betas.
  • Agreements such as NDA's and Beta Contracts you want to use.
  • Development of the feedback utilities -- interviews, questionnaires, surveys, webinars, demos with scoring values.
  • Development of test scenarios, automated tests, packaging and distribution of test product
  • the Budget you can spend for travel, rewards, and so on

In addition, your development should have a minimal process for designing, programming, source control, packaging and releasing code for test, entering and tracking defects and enhancements, and re-releasing the product with technical information about what has changed. If your development process does not follow these practices, not only will your Alpha and Beta phases be chaotic, but most likely your whole development lifecycle will be full of conflict and waste. If you cannot figure out how to organize your development process, give us a call (click on Contact Us) and we will refer you to software and sites that can help you. Go to Top

Volume and Stress Test

Beta user contacts are ideal for volume and stress tests where, for instance, you need to check record locking to ensure multi-user access is handled and also check the indexes of your data model to make sure your look-up speed is optimized.

To conduct a volume or stress test with non-professional QA resources such as the Betas you find through AlphaBetaFinder.com, you will need a really exact scenario (automated if at all possible) that you can give to your participants and then set up an exact time for them to try it simultaneously. Make sure you pre-test this test in house so that you can work out the procedure before you make appointments with your Betas. Make sure your Betas know it is a multi-user test and their timings and perhaps other multi-user factors are being recorded. Go to Top

Always Ask an Alpha or Beta if they want to be with other participants

Do not automatically assume you can invite your Alpha and Beta participants to a joint meeting or session until you privately ask them if this type of meeting is acceptable to them. They may have business relationships or even rivalries outside of your project that affects their being together.

Request the Unvarnished Truth

Alpha and Beta users and organizations should be hand selected and nurtured but not influenced. Make sure that you and your team are not spoonfeeding them the reactions you want. Repeat to yourselves and your prospective Alpha and Beta testers that you want the absolute, unvarnished truth from them. And then make sure you ask them the hard questions to get back those kinds of answers. Go to Top

Ask the Hard Questions

Tiptoeing through an Alpha or Beta session because of political, career, or team pressure is very dangerous for the future success of your product. Make sure you ask the really tough questions:

  • Would you buy this product if it were available for purchase today? at what price?
  • Would you recommend it to others in your company or profession?
  • Would you replace your current solution with this one if it were available?
  • Would you do business with our company?
  • What is the biggest obstacle you see in buying this product?
  • What is the biggest obstacle you see in using this product? Go to Top
Meet your Alpha and Beta Users

Try to arrange a real or virtual meeting with the Alpha and Beta prospects you are finalizing. A video chat session can be done very inexpensively if you cannot arrange a face to face meeting. Treat your Alpha and Beta prospects with as much care and background checking as you would use for a strategic employee because a good Alpha and Beta user will have as much if not more influence on your project and outcome.

If you are going to be doing webinars with them, try out their connectivity to your product beforehand. In fact, make every attempt to make the introduction to your new product as smooth as possible so that you get reactions only to the product, not to external factors. Go to Top

Quantity versus Quality

Alpha users tend to be small in number because lengthy interviews are usually requested. But they also tend to be in phases. It is not unusual to talk to Alpha users at different points in the conceptualization of a new product as ideas are refined. Make sure you leave the door open to recontact your Alphas in the future if other phases of input are needed.

Beta phases tend to rely more on quantity because most new products need to work in a variety of configurations, versions, releases, and environments. It is usually too much to ask a Beta user, particularly a voluntary one, to reconfigure environments for you, so you need to find a large pool of betas to cover all the configurations you might want. Betas also tend to be in multiple phases to stage and stagger the interaction of the development team. Go to Top

Automate the Tests

You should automate the tests you want Betas to perform by giving them scripts, recording utilities, even packaged test tools if at all possible. This allows you to capture information behind the scenes on what your product is doing, such as how much memory it is consuming or which instructions it is executing or which files it is touching. It also forces your Betas to be consistent about what they are doing so that you can rule out user error if your software or hardware seems to be misbehaving. It goes without saying that unless you are building pretty simple technology out of already mature and tested components, you should be automating your own QA process anyway, so sharing these tests with the Betas should be an obvious step. Go to Top

Start and Stay Virtual

No matter how much convenience and efficiency your organization may think there is in choosing Alphas and Betas within driving distance, this is simply not the case. Insist on your Alphas and Betas being geographically removed from your development site so that you can force yourselves to be virtual from the very beginning. This will push your team to automate things such as the install or packaging; it will force them to become practiced at remote debugging, and it will force them to advance plan the sessions and interactions more thoroughly. These are skills and experiences very important to your future success.

If your product is not going to be desktop software for end-users, you should configure your Alpha and Beta phases with your product hosted at your site or at a hosting service. This allows you to update your product conveniently and be consistent and methodic about its environment. It also pushes you to have Alphas and Betas remotely connect to your product so that the hassle and risk to them is greatly reduced. Just moving the product to the hosting site is an excellent exercise and forces you to gather all the pieces that the developers have forgotten that they even use. Unfortunately, desktop software ultimately must be beta'ed by being installed on end user desktops with all the technical support and troubleshooting this typically involves.

It will improve the global attributes of your product if you test it worldwide from its very inception, particularly if it needs to support multiple languages, currencies, or cultures. Unless you plan to build a product for a particular geographic location, you should set your development team to think as globally as possible by having the Alpha and Beta program be virtual in nature. Go to Top

Some Virtual Tools That Others are Using

for web-based live demos and for sharing of your desktop running your product:

Yugma http://www.yugma.com/

for Virtual Machine packaging and distributing of your software

VMWare http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

for wiki-style and other collaboration tools for collaborative development

http://www.basecamphq.com/ http://twiki.org/

for Defect reporting and Tracking:

Bugzilla — http://www.bugzilla.org/ Mantis — http://www.mantisbt.org/

for Source Control library and releaase tracking:

Free Country http://www.thefreecountry.com/programming/versioncontrol.shtml Go to Top

Quantify

Make as much of your Alpha and Beta feedback as possible quantifiable. Ask them for ratings and rankings on every feature and attribute. For example, do not ask if a screen is user-friendly. Ask instead "On a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being very easy to use, rate the ease of use of this screen." Turn your questionnaires into multiple choices or scales with numeric values assigned to them and use the simpler statistical calculations to find the sums, averages, means and so on of those scores. Then produce average scores, trend, or pattern reports by numerically analyzing that feedback. Produce a scorecard for your executives and backers so they can see at a glance how the feedback is progressing. Save these reports for future reference. Go to Top

One Development Organization Contact

Designate one technical person at your development company who is authorized as the point of contact for all Alpha and Beta users.

The Alpha and Beta Phases are part of the development lifecycle. It is for this reason that these phases should be led by a technical resource on your end. This person should know the new product from the inside out and be able to respond immediately to questions about how or why it works the way it does, how the various design factors were evaluated, and how hard or easy a specific change would be. The best contact is usually the Development Architect or Development Team Lead because he or she can directly answer these questions. Many organizations politically try to buffer their development team or even try to get a jump on future sales by placing a business development or product manager in this liaison role. These contacts are not usually technical enough to directly interface with the Alpha and Beta users and therefore insert unnecessary delays and hurdles in the process of mutually exchanging feedback and information. Avoid this if you can. Your Alpha and Beta users will undoubtedly know that they are being denied direct access to the originators of the product and will reduce their motivation and interest accordingly. Go to Top

Make Time and Resources Available in Your Development Cycle for Alphas and Betas

If you simply use our web site to enlist Alphas and Betas and then sprinkle these usage tests on top of your development timeline, expect your Alpha and Beta phases to derail your development with delays and unexpected changes. Using the most advanced methods of Extreme Programming or Agile Development does not change this.

The Alpha and Beta Phases are part of the development lifecycle and need to be factored in. It will require time in your cycle for the feedback input, changes, and re-release of your product. The Alphas and Betas will take time from your best developers to provide technical support, communication, the automating of tests and the writing of documentation. Make sure your project timeline allows for this interaction. It is not unusual for Alpha and Beta phases to go on for six months or much longer. They require the focus and attention of your developers during this time. However, active development can still be occurring during this time; many modern development methodologies overlap testing with Alphas and Betas with ongoing development. These methodologies work well as long as the cycle time for the Alpha and Beta testing is factored in and as long as support time from the development staff is factored in. Go to Top

Multiple Interactions

It is important to contact the Alpha and Beta users often as your product matures. Do not simply set up one session and drop contact with them. Email or call them approximately once a month during your development phase with a question or opinion request, however light, to keep them engaged and thinking about your product. Setting up a weekly phone call with a few of them to run development questions past them that came up during the week is extremely valuable, but make sure your developers are not tongue-tied during such a session or the contacts will consider it a waste of their time. Go to Top

Growing the Relationship

If an Alpha User works well for you, ask them how you can expand your interaction with them. Certainly bring up their becoming a Beta, but also ask them about joining you at a conference or webinar or working with your marketing person on a press release or testimonial. Make sure these requests are phrased as win/win interactions; free trips, free products, that feature he wanted that would make his technical life much easier, are all good incentives to grow the relationship to a more productive level.

Once the Alpha and Beta phase is over and your product is released for sale, it not unusual for Alphas and Betas to become real customers. Most often their initial software or hardware license is free or deeply discounted as a reward for their Alpha and Beta effort. Very often, their influential role with your product continues for a very long time through multiple releases. Go to Top

Fix Your Product and Give Your Alphas and Betas the Improved Releases

Restoring your reputation when you distributed a buggy and unstable product can only happen if you give your long suffering Alpha and Betas improved and more stable releases. Make sure you proactively offer them the service packs and fixes that demonstrate your product is improving. Go to Top

Clean Up After Yourself

Although your formal arrangements with Alpha and Beta Users and Organizations most likely do not obligate you to fix any damage or corruption your product might cause, it is good for your reputation and relationship if you do.

Help your Alpha and Beta users remove or disconnect your product if it causes them problems. Help them restore or reinstall operating systems or other applications that are mysteriously misbehaving after your software. Try to get them back to the state of operation they were in before you introduced your product. Go to Top

Product Developers Should Help Them Uninstall Their Product

If your arrangements with Alpha and Beta Users and Organizations require that they uninstall your product after their trial or test, be aware that your product might be impossible to uninstall unless you have already built and tested an uninstall program. Many times Alpha or Beta Agreements require uninstallation when the development group themselves have never actually uninstalled their own product and have no documentation or experience on how to do it. Such a requirement is unreasonable and unprofessional. Your development team needs to do the uninstall for the Alphas and Betas under these circumstances.

Most pre-production software and hardware is not packaged well enough for easy installation and this goes even more for uninstallation. You may be asking your voluntary users to completely eradicate something they cannot find all the pieces for; your request may be unreasonable unless you give them complete documentation on all settings and files your product touches so that they can indeed remove it. If uninstalling your product is important for intellectual property or confidentiality reasons, you should set up a remote session to uninstall it for them or even send an engineer to their site to uninstall it for them. Again, hosting your product as a service at your site with Alphas and Betas connected remotely eliminates uninstall issues. Building it with a scheduled or timed de-activation program is another way to handle this. Go to Top

I now have lots of projects and tests and users. How do I keep them all straight?

To help you keep them straight, we retain all old projects and tests for your reference BUT we sort them to the bottom of the screen so you do not have to see them unless you need to. Your more recent, active tests and projects are at the top.

Another practice we do to help you and to keep you as informed as possible about users is to include as much of their information about past and existing tests and projects as possible. When a user meets your search conditions, the screen information shows you if the user is already in other tests and projects and the status of that user. For example, if the user has already accepted an invitation from you on another test, you see that and so may decided not to invite that person to the new test. You will also see on the screen if the user is a "No Response" user and so might decide not to invite that user to a new test. "No Response" users are sorted last in the search results to help keep you from wasting time with them. Go to Top

This FAQ was useful, but we don't have the time or experience to do our Alpha or Beta Projects this way.
We offer consulting for Alpha and Beta Phase Planning and Execution. If you need some help, contact us for information on our consulting services. Go to our Consulting Info here. Go to Top

 

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