This book is intended for companies who are managing beta tests of their products. We’re also always looking for beta testers. If you’re interested, please sign-up at www.betabound.com.

One of our primary goals at Centercode is to help educate the business world on the topic of effective beta testing. To date we’ve published a number of free resources, ranging from kits for handling the legal side of beta testing, to templates for planning your next beta, to a calculator for assessing the total ROI of beta.

While we’re very proud of these resources, we’ve yet to cover beta categorically, from A to Z. With our latest (and biggest) project, we’re changing that. What You Need to Know About Beta is a series of detailed guides that will ultimately come together to form a book that we plan to publish, providing in-depth information covering all aspects of beta testing, including its many variations ranging from mobile to enterprise.

Given the nature of our business, we felt that it made the most sense to release this project in pieces, one chapter at a time. In doing so we’ll be able to capture feedback on each, improving the final product as we go. Effectively we’re eating our own dog food by beta testing our book directly with the audience that we believe will find the most value in it. And as our beta incentive, we’ll be sending a free copy of the final printed version to everyone who provides relevant feedback (see page 12 of of the beta management chapter if you’d like a definition of “relevant feedback”!).

To kick off the series, we’re releasing our first chapter, What You Need To Know | Beta Management, which offers an introduction to beta management and includes topics like recruiting and managing feedback.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Ben Fredericson.