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Delta is the next generation of beta testing, leveraging Centercode technology to automate time consuming tasks while increasing user engagement and test results.
What is delta testing and how are tech leaders using it to deliver customer insights throughout agile development? This guide has all the answers.
Advice on running effective, scalable delta testing programs from the Centercode team.
Discover the best content from Centercode in 2024, including ebooks, blogs, webinars, and more.
Guest author Chip Duval compares building a beta tester team to assembling an NBA dream team like the 23–24 Celtics.
Learn how the Webex Beta team transformed their program, driving massive growth in engagement and customer feedback.
With businesses experiencing setbacks, building a product that stands out amongst your competition is critical. While layoffs or budget freezes can leave you with fewer resources, customers expect that their money gets them a quality product, especially in a downturn.
As many teams are now working remotely, it’s challenging to maintain the same level of engagement and productivity that once existed. Remote teams can achieve a thriving remote culture, but it’s going to take some effort to ensure everyone feels aligned and included.
Executive teams invest their hearts and souls into building an environment, a vibe, and a workplace culture that not only attracts new talent, it also keeps employees from looking elsewhere. But, when I say “culture” did you immediately think ping pong tables, sushi chefs, baristas and nap pods?
Looking for ways to recession proof your products? Check out these three tips on how to create products that support your business, even during down times.
I’m willing to bet that you’ve experienced “writer’s block” before. I’d be lying to say that I have not, because I just did. As I sat down to write about Centercode’s new Project Kickoff Dashboard, I was struggling to come up with where to begin.
One of the most important facets of product testing is identifying and finding an audience that will help you make your products better. When planning a product test, perhaps the most vital question to ask when determining who will test your product is, whose feedback will be the most important to your product’s development?
Centercode is trusted with your prized possessions–your products and your customers. As such, we take data security seriously.
In Spring of 2021, Centercode's biggest release yet was imminent and it was finally time to gather customer feedback. Coincidentally, the release included an entirely new framework, Delta testing, built to capture actionable feedback from testers with minimal effort.
We live in a world where the tools and services we use every day are in a constant state of improvement. Not only do our favorite devices improve massively with each new release, so does the software that powers them.
This week we round out our series on the Centercode Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) by discussing testing Delta Impact Score.
There are a couple of big differences between traditional beta testing and delta testing. Perhaps one of the most significant is delta testing’s focus on working within Agile environments (vs. waterfall). Many parts of the delta testing methodology are pulled directly from common forms of Agile development.
That meeting could have been an email… Unfortunately this is a sentiment we’ve all had after a meeting that didn't feel particularly effective.
In my last post, we discussed measuring tester engagement as a part of test health. Today, we are going to discuss measuring product success.
One of the primary concerns of any project manager throughout the testing period is whether there’s enough tester engagement. Good tester engagement is instrumental to a successful delta test.
There are countless benefits to having a successful user testing program. Being able to confidently bring new products to market and mature existing products is where the key business value lies.
If you read Part 1, you already know that the Centercode Delta release is a totally new way to plan and run user tests using automation, intuitive dashboards, and rich user feedback. So let’s dive into some of these features a little deeper.
Have you ever wanted to be able to automate your user tests and just jump to the good part where you get awesome feedback that’s easy to apply to product development? Us too.
The benefits of an awesome, highly effective invite are obvious: it allows you to attract and recruit qualified candidates (like customers or potential customers) for your beta, field, UAT, and user testing projects.
Whether you’ve returned to the office, work in a hybrid model, or your entire company took the leap to being fully remote, our work spaces have changed dramatically in the last two years.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” This quote from Atomic Habits, by best-selling author and habit expert James Clear, is as true for using customer insight to drive product decision-making as it is for training to run a marathon, not biting your nails, or remembering to unload the dishwasher every night.
What is continuous user research, exactly? We like this definition from Tomer Sharon, head of user research at Goldman Sachs:
So you want to run a beta program — and we're stoked for you! Whether you got here after running a handful of beta tests on your own, or your boss handed the task over to you, the insights you get from beta testing open the door to an incredibly enriching world of customer knowledge and product insight.
Relationships require care. And not just in the form of those once-in-a-while grand gestures — though an extra special thank you every now and again never hurts.
Imagine you're running a marathon. At first, you're bursting with energy — you've been waiting for this! You feel like you could run forever!
Calculating user testing metrics? Avoid this common mistake and learn how to find the 3 metrics that matter most to showing your impact.
No one knows what your customers need better than your customers; that's why their feedback has never been more critical to the success of your product.
It's the time of year for resolutions: where we dream big about the things we want to do and improvements we want to make in the hopes this year will be better than the last. But as everyone who's two weeks into a diet or exercise routine knows, resolutions are easy to set but difficult to keep — especially when you don't have a system in place for making it happen.
After 2020 and a year defined by upheaval, 2021 has been all about recovery and progress: shedding what doesn't work, strengthening what does, and reimagining possibilities in a world with a new outlook and new demands for the future.
Should you plan to launch a user testing project over the holidays? In this installment of Ask the Expert, Centercode's Sr. Test Manager Mike Fine talks about the oft-debated holiday test launch: when it works, when it doesn't, and what you should expect from your testers.
Just like there are many ways to collect attitudinal data, there are different moments when data about your customers' thoughts, opinions, and attitudes comes into play during product development. But how do you get this data?
When you think of "incentives" in user testing, the first thing that comes to mind might be a free product or a gift card. And yes, those are both common and viable ways to reward testers for their participation.
Alpha testing is a critical part of getting ready for your product launch. It generally starts when your product is 60% feature-complete: stable enough to work in the real world, but still needs fine-tuning before it's ready for customers.
At some level, you probably already understand segmentation as a concept. But let's talk about how it applies to user testing. In user testing, segmentation means splitting your tester pool into subsets based on certain characteristics.
The first step in building a product that solves problems is understanding what problems exist for your customers and how they're attempting to solve them. Technographics are a critical part of that understanding.
Delta testing is user testing automation. At a tactical level, delta testing means: identifying users from your target market, getting them to use and provide feedback about your product, prioritizing those insights, and turning them into action items for Product and Engineering.
The whole point of automating your user testing processes is to make the hard work of traditional beta faster and easier. But saying "beta is automated now" isn't the only thing that makes delta testing more efficient and effective.
Beta testing has many moving pieces. You need to recruit target market testers with the right demographic and technographic segmentations.
In life, there are challenges you take on because they build character and the end goals are enormously rewarding. Other times, you find yourself mid-challenge because it's something you have to do, whether that's for your role, your product, or your organization.
The market for connected devices and other technology is more competitive today than it's ever been. Companies know that it's not enough to get their product off the shelves.
Beta, field, and user acceptance testing have the same overall goal in mind: to gather real-world feedback and improve products before launch. But while the majority of companies include customer tests, companies relying on traditional user testing practices experience varying degrees of success.
It's easy to find a company that has some sort of dogfooding or employee testing program. But it's much more difficult to find one whose program delivers actionable user insights derived from co-worker product use — unlike those companies using delta testing tools and practices.
Competitive testing is a use case in delta testing that lets you research and test competitors' products with their customers (i.e., your potential customers).
Let's get one thing straight: delta testing does not replace UX or CX. Yes, delta testing, also known as user testing automation, provides exploratory user experience feedback from real-world usage by representatives of your target market demographics. But delta testing's unique deliverables are complements to, not competing with, the work of UX and CX teams.
Delta testing is user testing automation. Like beta, field, UAT, and other fields of user testing, it generates feedback by getting functioning products into the hands of targeted users and giving them time to absorb and adopt the products out in their real-world environments.
In a nutshell, delta testing is automated user testing. It's a proven, cost-effective approach to legacy user testing that allows companies to capture early product feedback from customers throughout the product life cycle.
The key to bubbling up the insights you need from user testing is getting the right users to provide the feedback you need for wherever you are in development. But what does the "right tester" actually mean?
As a product owner, the prospect of bringing a new product to market is exciting. You see a gap in the market for a device, software, or mobile app that will make your customers' lives easier or more enjoyable.
There comes a point when the scale of your user testing projects or program exceeds what standard productivity tools like email and spreadsheets can handle. And that's when it's time for an upgrade: a specialized user testing tool that will serve as a hub for all your test management activities. Awesome!
These quick user testing insights will help you identify which types of tests will deliver actionable, real-world-driven recommendations that increase product success.
Since Centercode was founded back in 2001, we've learned a lot about what goes into becoming a highly skilled and competent user testing professional. Experience is a great teacher after all! What's even better is you don't have to work in the field for 20 years to benefit from our two decades of insights.
Centercode was founded in 2001 as a way to connect technology innovators with their real customers through user testing. In 20 years, technology has changed significantly. But our mission — to remove friction in today's technology by helping companies perfect their products — has stayed the same.
Today, there are thousands of connected tech products on the market — and thousands of mobile apps for managing each one.
By 2022, Gartner predicts that there will be 6.4 billion devices in use next year as smartphones overtake desktop computers.
One of the greatest traits of agile development is that it allows teams to respond to customer desires quickly. Its flexibility and conduciveness to rapid iteration opened the door to product evolution through small, successive improvements.
Investing in product analytics, quality testing, user experience, and market research is absolutely essential to building a good product.
It’s been decades since product developers first started using beta testing. Early tech companies first discovered back then what is common knowledge nowadays: If you get targeted users to provide product feedback, you can turn that data into insights and action items for Product and Engineering. It’s a highly effective strategy for product success — […]
Data is a library of information. And like a library, the books inside are only useful to you if they’re written in a language you understand. You also don’t have time to read every book in the library when you have a finite amount of time and a job to get done. The books you […]
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all method of product development that’s guaranteed to work for your organization. Take Agile, for example. Eighty percent of today’s tech companies have adopted agile practices — so there must be something to it, right? But not everyone practices Agile the same way. In fact, what counts as “agile development” can vary […]
Every year, Consumer Reports tests thousands of products — from cars, to laptops, to WIFI-enabled speakers and appliances — and grades them on a scale of 0 to 100. A trusted source of unbiased product testing, their mission is to make it easier for consumers to make well-informed buying decisions. And it’s as helpful to […]
In the early 90s, the technological landscape was a very different place. Internet access wasn’t available in the average household. Cell phones weighed around a pound and a half. Spam was something you ate with eggs or over rice. And the idea of a home filled with technology that could wirelessly communicate not only with […]
E-commerce had been trending steadily upward for years. Then the pandemic came along and did exactly what you’d expect a globally disruptive force to do: It changed everything very, very quickly. What happened exactly? The U.S. Department of Commerce reported a 30% increase in online spending from 2019 to 2020 (compared to the previous 13% […]
With consumers adopting more and more smart tech, the everyday spaces of your customers has become an interoperability minefield. The key to navigating that minefield without a performance blowup? Tapping into an aspect of growing importance within the realm of beta testing: technographics. Today we’re talking technographics — what they are, why they matter, who […]
When most people think of “beta test feedback,” they think of bug reports and feature requests. And they’re not wrong — issues and ideas are a key component to a successful pre-release customer test. But they aren’t the only way that test managers should be collecting feedback during beta. With a targeted group of candidates […]
What makes a product perfect? Your answer might depend on the role you play in product development. If you’re all about quality, you might describe perfection as a product that aces all its test scripts and doesn’t surprise you with bugs once it’s in the field. If your focus is UX, you might call a […]
Technology isn’t the only thing that’s rapidly evolved in the past 25 years. The people who consume tech have also changed significantly. From the niche world of hi-tech enthusiasts from the 90s to today’s mainstream users, the people who consume technology have had as much of an effect on its evolution as it has had […]
We’ve often described modern technology as highly sophisticated, highly connected, and continuously iterative. The rapid-fire changes of 2020 didn’t change that — in fact, it brought those qualities into sharper relief. It highlighted both the reliability of technology and its shortcomings. 2021 will be shaped by companies that have the best understanding of these nuances […]
This is the time of year where many of us are looking back on the last twelve months and reflecting on what we’d like to do better. But it’s also a time when we can be grateful for the things that are already good — especially in a year marked by so much loss, change, […]
You can say what you like about 2020, but you can’t say we didn’t learn a lot. This year has forced us to grow and change many, many aspects of our lives, from how we work (#remote), to how we communicate with our team (“Can you guys see my screen?”), to how to dress (hello […]
Software and tech gadgets are developing faster than we could ever have imagined even a decade ago. In many ways, this year has put a spotlight on those advancements as many industries pivot to adapt with unprecedented changes and uncertainty. More and more everyday products are being replaced by their sophisticated counterparts. And with many […]
Setting too many expectations may be a quick path to disappointment in life, but what happens when you don’t set expectations during your beta test? Well, two decades of test planning and management has shown us it sort of ends up like the Wild West. Either your project turns into an out-of-control stampede…. Or..it’s a […]
Is more testers always the best solution when you’re experiencing a dip in feedback? In this Ask the Expert series, Centercode’s Chris Rader weighs in on large tester teams: when they work, when they don’t, and how to manage when your stakeholders want to keep adding testers. Got a question you’d like to see on […]
If you want to run a solid user acceptance test, you need a solid plan — but since you’re reading this, you probably knew that already. With so much at stake, planning ain’t easy; there are schedules to build, people to recruit, stakeholders to work with, feedback to sort. We created this user acceptance testing […]
The enormous stress of 2020 has made it all too easy to focus on what we don’t have: parties with friends and family, the ability to travel, some of our favorite holiday traditions…I’ll stop there before I start crying. But one tradition the COVID pandemic can’t disrupt is expressing gratitude — ’tis the season, after […]
Why does AI that performs so well in a lab underperform when it’s out in the real world? Earlier this month, a team of 40 Google researchers published a study about just that — and their investigation returned some vital insights into the challenges of developing machine learning. Research points to a phenomenon known as […]
2020 has been aptly dubbed the “Year of Streaming.” Movie premieres, live concerts, conventions, and other normally in-person gatherings are joining the vast popularity of streaming media and games made possible by streaming services all over the world. Coronavirus solidified an already shifting focus toward entertainment and events that consumers can enjoy from home. But […]
For nearly two decades, Centercode has provided leading platform and managed service customer testing solutions that help companies turn good technology into great products. A new study revealed that organizations leveraging Centercode saw a 646% return on investment (ROI) from customer testing over three years. While investing in marketing research, quality testing, user experience, and […]
Imagine: A delightful, bug-free product springs fully formed from your PRD and lands directly into your customers’ waiting hands. Seems impossible? That’s only because…it is. No product is perfect at the start. But perfecting a product is possible — and with the right methodologies and practices, it’s well within reach. But first, What Makes a […]
In May 2020, Twitter defied the uncertainty of the then-nascent COVID-19 pandemic with a decisive announcement: they were making work-from-home permanent. It was a plan two years in the making, but one that foreshadowed a global trend. Now, work from home (WFH) is the norm for many companies — and it is permanently shaping the […]
In October 2020, YouTube quietly changed the way it beta tests which allows only premium subscribers to opt-in to test new features. It’s a departure from the way things have always been when they just selected beta testers at random. We speculate it’s because YouTube realizes that a paid subscriber is more invested in the […]
Here’s the universal truth about insurance: you buy it, but you hope you never actually have to use it. We treat insurance as a necessary evil for this reason. Nobody ever looks forward to purchasing or using it. In every case where insurance gets used — be it for your car, your house, or your […]
Today’s homes may still be a far cry from the Jetson’s — but rapid advances in technology mean they’re smarter than ever. Products are getting more sophisticated, and as home automation spreads to wider audiences, product makers are running into both new opportunities and challenges in equal measure. Consumer desire to make the home more […]
Wearables have quickly become an easy way to enhance health, personal care, and fitness routines and deliver notifications from paired mobile devices. In 2019, the number of wearable shipments jumped over 80% with a new high of 118.9 million units. By 2024, that number is expected to reach 526.8 million. Consumers rely on wearables like […]
In the home environment, communication is king. But it isn’t limited to people; it’s also mandatory for connected devices. The ability of newly adopted tech to “talk” to the existing devices in a given environment is a baseline expectation. Ease of integration makes the difference between a household staple and a re-boxed product on its […]
Even the most robust and well-resourced QA labs have limits. There’s simply no way to keep up with the growing combinations of technology devices your customers are using in their lives. But products that operate seamlessly in any and every technical environment are exactly what your customers are expecting. The testing team at Arris, a […]
As the industry gets rocked with viral and economic disruption, consumers want more for their money. Meanwhile, the audience leveraging technology is broader than ever before — meaning the demand for seamless and delightful product experiences is the highest it’s ever been. How can companies fulfill higher customer expectations when resources are strained and the […]
The world is in a constant state of change — and it’s never been more apparent than during this period of global COVID disruption. Tech companies, in particular, are adapting in several ways. Some are scaling down the number of product launches to focus their resources on a select few. Some are reimagining the use […]
When you’re looking to shave costs anywhere you can, quality is the one thing you can’t afford to cut. It’s the number one objective driving your product’s success. But ensuring high quality is expensive. You need thorough test coverage before release — that is, you need to see how your product’s features and functions perform […]
Begging for feedback from unenthusiastic or inexperienced testers is a frustratingly common occurrence for many beta and delta testing teams. But tester engagement — and the resulting feedback — are both vital to test success. After all, without pre-release feedback to act on, there’s no way to be sure your next release has the quality […]
If you’re like 75% of professionals charged with securing real-world insights from beta testing, your time is short. When it comes to beta testing, Centercode is synonymous with saving time. We’re a one-stop-shop for removing time sinks by simplifying beta processes, automating tasks, and securing razor-sharp, real-world validated product recommendations. Here’s how top tech companies […]
It’s our mission here at Centercode to make technology easier to use and more accessible for everyday people. We’re passionate about it — that’s why ‘passionate’ is one of the six core values we live by. In this new series about our core values, we’ll take a look at how each of those values informs […]
Picture this: you’re in a meeting about an upcoming product release that will launch in a couple of months. The product is almost feature-complete, which means it’s just about ready for beta testing. Someone — maybe it’s your boss or someone from a different department — starts talking about recruitment. “This product has a lot […]
With hundreds, sometimes thousands of products to choose from, Amazon star ratings and reviews are one of the most common and reliable ways for consumers to make buying decisions and feel confident in their choices. In a 2016 study, 71% of consumers reported feeling more comfortable purchasing a product based on its reviews. As shopping […]
Everyone’s under a lot of stress — and unsurprisingly, the companies producing new products are experiencing parallel challenges to the customers they’re serving. The full economic toll of COVID-19 in the foreseeable future is a magnet for uncertainty around new product launches and releases. Many workers are still remote, which means they’re still learning how […]
In early June of 2020, tech giant IBM announced they will stop offering facial recognition software until further anti-bias testing has been conducted. “IBM firmly opposes and will not condone the uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, [or] violations of basic human rights and […]
The obvious: your revenue depends on your ability to launch a quality product. The not-so-obvious: figuring out how to drive up that quality efficiently when your production schedule has been disrupted, your processes are changing, and you’re grappling with both internal and external factors that are beyond your control. Even as we cautiously hope the […]
Sheltering in place for two-and-a-half months has bubbled a lot to the surface — some of it good, some of it bad, all of it unique to the situation. As parts of the country are finally beginning to reopen, it begs the question of how we’ll adapt to post-quarantine life — not just the things […]
Strong tester participation is at the heart of every successful Customer Validation test. When you’ve recruited enthusiastic, target market testers to use your product, complete surveys, and submit feedback, you have everything you need to deliver those highly sought after recommendations for improvement. But while everyone agrees that engagement is critical, only half of customer […]
This week marks Centercode’s 19th birthday! 🎈 While we’re celebrating much the same way we all have these past two months — virtual happy hours, slack chats, and other new-normal gatherings — we’re still coming up with fun and creative ways to stay engaged with our coworkers. This week’s Hometasking challenge asked us to create […]
The only certainty in these unpredictable times is that your customers know what they want — and they’re eager to talk about it. That’s what makes securing customer feedback more crucial than ever. But with your team — and your customers — scattered to the winds and hunkered down for the long haul, it can […]
Securing high-quality feedback from your project is like taking a roadtrip — with the right travel companions, a thorough plan, and a map of how to get where you’re going, you have all the building blocks for success. We’ve already dug into diagnosing potential challenges — communication breakdown, recruiting the wrong testers, friction caused by […]