Leader Insights Blog Posts

4 Beta Testing Examples from Well-known Companies

Discover how world-renowned companies like Nike, Coca-Cola, and Apple use beta testing to refine their products and better understand their target audience. Explore four real-world beta testing examples showcasing the power of beta testing to drive innovation and improve the user experience.

20 Tips from 20 Years of Centercode

Leader Insights

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’s CEO on 20 Years of Technology and User Testing

Leader 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.

Centercode CEO Talks Tackling Challenges with a COVID-World Mindset

Leader Insights

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 […]

5 Beta Program Tips to Live By from Industry Superstars

Leader Insights

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 […]

Humanizing the Role of Beta Managers Through Communication

Leader Insights

If you’ve attended a QA or testing conference recently, it seems as though manual testing is a dying discipline. Due in part to the speed of development, test automation, and artificial intelligence, a greater proportion of test management is now influenced or even controlled by developers. In our interview with Jennifer Bonine, CEO of PinkLion.ai […]

3 Essential Community Management Tips from Microsoft’s Dona Sarkar

Leader Insights

In this second post of our two-part interview with Dona Sarkar, leader of the Windows Insider program, she unpacks several community management tips for beta program executives, product managers, and other people responsible for Customer Validation. While your community may not be at the scope and scale of Dona’s program at Microsoft (and not many […]

Microsoft’s Dona Sarkar on Co-Creation and Leading a Thriving Beta Program

Leader Insights

Technology is developed to serve people, but those people – customers – haven’t always had their own seat at the product development table. That’s what makes the work of people like Dona Sarkar so compelling. As the leader of the Windows Insider Program – Microsoft’s 17 million user beta program – Dona’s focus on co-creation […]

How Sonos is Leveraging User Research to Enhance Their Beta Program

Leader Insights

Beta testing is much more than a box to check off on a list. While some companies only think of it as a last-ditch effort to tie up loose ends before launch, others are tapping user research to play a more fundamental role in the product development process. In fact, today’s most forward-thinking companies are […]

AI and the Future of Testing

Leader Insights

Whether it’s the rise of AI, CI/CD, or DevOps, the lines between testing and development are blurring. But as testing methodologies evolve and bleed into development, professional testers are questioning how this evolution will affect their role in product development. In our interview with Jason Arbon, CEO of Test.ai, we dive deeper into the future […]

Developing a Test Strategy for the Agile World

Leader Insights

Test strategy is critical to the success of any testing effort – but where do you start? How does your strategy conform to different development methodologies? What should you tackle in-house, and what should you outsource? How you involve real users in beta testing? In our interview with Adam Satterfield, director of Testing and Quality […]

The 3 Most Important Product Testing Issues for Today’s CMOs

Leader Insights

Recently, I attended the 2018 Customer Validation Conference in southern California, where product testing experts from B2B and B2C companies (including Autodesk, Tableau, Test Fairy, FitBit, and GoPro) shared tips and lessons learned from the forefront of product development and testing. Below are the three key takeaways that I learned at the conference – and […]

Mission Accomplished With This Creative Tester Engagement Strategy

Leader Insights

Over the course of seven years as an Alpha (employee) tester and six years as a Beta Program Manager, I had become accustomed to being involved with beta tests for projects that had specific goals and schedules, which generally kept testers engaged for the projects duration. Our participation rates had been hovering around 60-70% on […]

How IBM and Google Shaped the Term “Beta”

Leader Insights

At Centercode we use the term “beta” countless times every day. We realized that even though we use it so much, we’d never taken a moment to step back and consider where it came from. So we thought it would be nice to take a moment to look at how the term beta has developed […]

We’re Visiting On Product Management

Leader Insights

We’re a guest author today on the On Product Management blog. Our post takes a look at how to know when you’re ready for beta and includes checklists to help determine product, team, and tester readiness. Big thank you to the On Product Management team for letting us visit! Check out the post now!