Content Release Blog Posts

Our Most Popular Beta Management Resources of 2013

We add a lot of new resources to our library and our blog throughout the year. Over time, some rise to the top, so we’ve put together the winners from 2013. If you’re new to our site (or just looking for the best advice we’ve shared so far) these popular pieces would be a great […]

New Resource: Beta Test Management Glossary

Content Release

Beta testing has a lot of terminology. Those familiar with beta throw around terms like beta applicant, feedback loop, and test platform because we use these terms every day. However, it’s important to make sure that for members of your team that don’t manage betas day-in and day-out, there’s an agreed upon set of terms […]

Public Betas as a Launch Tool

Content Release

We’re going to delve into the differences between public and private beta tests to clear up some of the misconceptions and help you devise a beta strategy that makes the most sense for your product. We’ve also written a free whitepaper that walks you through planning a successful public beta test. For now, let’s start with the basics.

New eBook for Product Managers

Content Release

Beta testing is often dumped on the plate of an already busy product manager during the hectic weeks before a product launch. To make matters worse, companies rarely have the tools and processes in place to run an effective beta test. As a result, beta ends up feeling more like a necessary evil that needs to get checked off of the list, rather than a valuable contribution to product development.

New eBook: Keeping Beta Tests Confidential

Content Release

Product launches are often shrouded in secrecy, with a focus on making a big splash when the product is launched. Teams often devote months (if not years) to developing a new product, and as you get closer to the release, you get more and more nervous about confidential product details going public. In those final weeks, putting your product into the hands of a group of complete strangers for a beta test can feel like a huge risk. What if someone finds out about the bugs we uncover? What if a beta tester tells the press about the product? Or worse, gives it to my competitor?

What Type of Beta Am I Running?

Content Release

Recently, we announced our ongoing What You Need to Know Series. Each chapter of the series will look at a different type of beta test and its challenges. Our goal with this series is to give you the ability to create a custom roadmap based on the specific needs of your beta. In order to do that you will need to answer one very important question: What type of beta am I running?

What You’ll Find in Our Beta Management Guide

Content Release

Last week we launched our What You Need to Know Series. Each chapter of the series will cover a different type of beta test, and its challenges, goals, and benefits. Our ultimate goal is to combine these chapters into a book that our readers can use to run almost any kind of beta.

Beta Test Our Upcoming Beta Management Book

Content Release

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.

Introducing the Beta Test ROI Kit

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Today we’re excited to release a free kit that focuses on the ROI (return on investment) of beta testing. Despite being such an important topic in terms of proving value, determining budget, and justifying expenditures, beta test ROI has gotten a bad rap as a near-impossible calculation. It’s understandable, since the lack of tools or discussions on the subject left people to reinvent the wheel each time. However, those dark days are gone with the release of Centercode’s Beta ROI whitepaper, calculator, and video tour.

Free Whitepaper: Getting Ready for Beta Testing

Content Release

With 2012 rapidly approaching, we’re releasing another free beta testing resource that we hope will be very helpful as companies get ready to launch new products in the upcoming year. The whitepaper, entitled Getting Ready for Beta Testing, explores tips and best practices that product developers can rely on as they grapple with the question of when to begin their beta test.

Our Software Beta Planning Kit is Now Available

Content Release

A detailed beta test plan is one of the key components of a successful beta test. When your beta test is well-organized from the start, it allows you to stay focused on your product during testing, rather than playing catch up. To help more people develop great beta test plans, we decided to create free beta test planning kits. We started with a hardware beta test planning kit, and today we’re publishing a kit for software betas that caters more to software-specific topics like digital distribution and product keys. So whether you’re running a desktop, mobile, gaming, or web beta, our beta test planning kit can help you do it better.

Announcing our Free Hardware Beta Planning Kit

Content Release

Like all projects, a successful beta test begins with a well-developed plan. Our objective is to make that planning easier by offering resources built on our 10+ years of experience in beta management. One important lesson we’ve learned is that creating a hardware beta plan is decidedly different from creating a software beta test plan. There are subtle nuances in areas like budgeting and product distribution and completely new problems like acquiring beta hardware and replacing defective units. We’ll help you prepare for all of them.

Free eBook: 100 Tips for Better Beta Tests

Content Release

We’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.

Free eBook: Reaching 90% Beta Participation

Content Release

Whenever 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 guides to help! Today we’re releasing the first installment, which tackles the biggest challenge of them all — beta participation.

Announcing our Beta Test Agreement Kit

Content Release

In the spirit of helping more companies run successful beta tests, we’re happy to release our first premium content offering — the Beta Test Agreement Kit. This free download introduces companies to the different agreements commonly used in beta testing, with ready-to-use templates of the actual documents and a detailed companion guide to help explain all the legal jargon.