Learning to Love the Novice Beta Tester
Posted August 18th, 2011 by Adam Wright in Beta Guru. View CommentsWe often get emails from upset applicants who weren’t selected for a beta test despite impressive credentials. And sometimes we see companies that only want to select tech-savvy beta testers. In both cases, there’s a simple misunderstanding about beta tests that we’d like to clear up. A tester team needs to reflect the product’s target market, which usually means recruiting testers with all levels of expertise—even low levels. When you rely solely on expert beta testers, your results can be incomplete if not misleading.
Why Geography Matters in Beta Recruitment
Posted August 5th, 2011 by Adam Wright in Beta Guru. View CommentsWe talked last week about where to find beta testers, but there’s another important “where” when it comes to beta recruitment. Where do your testers live? Geographic location is an oft-neglected factor in beta testing, but it can be critically important. So today, we’re going to look at situations in which where your testers live matters just as much as other demographic characteristics.
7 More Beta Tester Recruiting Sources
Posted July 28th, 2011 by Ashish Mishra in Beta Guru, Guest Author. View CommentsAt Adobe, we’re always trying to introduce new testers into our prerelease program (that’s what we call beta). There are many benefits to getting new testers into each prerelease cycle. Not only are more testers expected to generate more feedback, they also increase the likelihood that your product is tested by people from different industries, geographies, profiles and with varied system configurations and expertise levels. The challenge for many beta managers, though, is where do these new testers come from? To help, here are 7 tips you can use to grow your tester community—many of which have worked very well for us.
Free eBook: 100 Tips for Better Beta Tests
Posted July 21st, 2011 by Adam Wright in Premium Content. View CommentsWe’re happy to announce that our long-awaited eBook, 100 Tips for Better Beta Tests, is now available. This free 32-page guide offers tips on all phases of beta testing, from planning through completion, with a mixture of our own best practices and contributions from test managers at Adobe, Avid, Autodesk, Symantec, TiVo, and UPS.
Improving Your Beta Program with Personas
Posted July 7th, 2011 by Adam Wright in Beta Guru. View CommentsPersonas are a big part of product marketing, but they’re generally underutilized in beta testing. We have some clients who’ve carried personas into their beta programs, but they’re in the minority. On the other hand, they’re a very successful minority. So, in this blog post, we’re exploring ways that you can apply customer persona techniques to help improve your next beta test.
Beta Mastery Guide #1: Reaching 90% Beta Participation
Posted June 21st, 2011 by Adam Wright in Premium Content. View CommentsWhenever we give a demo to potential clients, we have a slide in our deck that outlines the five biggest challenges teams face in beta testing their products. What we’ve seen is that most beta programs are experiencing several if not all of these challenges, so we decided to publish a series of free Beta Mastery Guides to help turn that trend around. Today we’re releasing the first installment in that series, which tackles the biggest challenge of them all—beta participation.
Centercode Acquires Customer Feedback Solutions
Posted June 1st, 2011 by Adam Wright in Corporate. View CommentsWe’re very excited to announce Centercode’s acquisition of Customer Feedback Solutions (CFS, custfeedback.com), a New York-based provider of beta test and feedback management solutions. The executive team at CFS felt that Centercode was a great fit based on our industry knowledge, comprehensive offering, and experience in supporting, complex web-based applications and the needs of their customers.
Dealing with Critical Bugs at the Beta Stage
Posted May 26th, 2011 by Adam Wright in Beta Guru. View CommentsWhen you encounter a critical issue in a beta test, things can get out of hand quickly. Your testers are demanding results, your developers are demanding data, and your marketing people are demanding reassurance. What you need is a reliable series of steps to help you maintain control of your beta and reduce the heat you’re feeling. So, we’ve developed something called the ICEGAP protocol for just this situation.
Reaping the Rewards of Active Beta Management
Posted May 19th, 2011 by Adam Wright in Beta Guru. View CommentsIf you want to run an effective beta test, being active and engaged every day is crucial. It can be tough if beta management isn’t your full-time job, but it’s hard to argue with the improved levels of feedback and participation you’ll see from being that involved. And nobody wants to be the person who let critical bug reports go unnoticed for a few days. Luckily, we’ve got some helpful tips to get as much benefit as you can from the time you have to participate.
Sharing Beta Test Data in Your Organization
Posted May 4th, 2011 by Adam Wright in Beta Guru. View Comments
