Beta Testing

Beta Testing is a critical component of the software release cycle. It is the last stage of testing of a product and takes place after alpha testing.  At this time, the software product is close to completion. When the product is released for Beta testing, the product is in its Beta Release. The key focus of beta testing to make sure the product works seamlessly when finally released to the user.

While alpha testing is usually done by internal testing teams, beta version of the product is released to targeted users outside of the company.  A beta version of the software is close to the final product but has a good probability of having bugs, low performance, crashes and loss of data. Hence, this release it is not available to all users. The users who use it have exclusive access to the product and are called Beta testers. Beta testers work closely with the software testing team of the company to catch all critical bugs and ensure the final build of the product is stable.

In many B2B scenarios the beta sites are the key customers who will be the major users of the software. Thus it makes the Beta test period equally important for the Beta testers as the product would be critical to the success of their own company.

A few years ago, beta testing phase was not a part of the software release cycle. The companies would only release the final version after spending years on testing and improvising the product. But this resulted in some serious flaws, the new culture of Beta testing slowly started to evolve. It started off with companies only releasing the product to selected group of people who are invited to Beta test. Now consumer focused companies release their Beta version to the public and welcome feedback from anyone.

I personally enjoy gaming and hence I have always found Beta testing for games to be a pretty interesting job since you are required to play games for a living! A Beta tester for games would be expected to play the different levels of the games till it crashes in order to test its robustness. The tester would also be required to check if everything looks correct and works logically. This would mean that the tester would need to play the same level multiple times in different ways hoping that it would crash. But this job is not as easy as it sounds. The tester also needs to come up with ideas to break the game and also needs to report anything and everything to the developer. Even though the tester gets to be one of the first few who gets to access the latest game or product that has not been released to the public , he/she would be required to keep the information confidential.

References:
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/B/beta_test.html
http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/13/technology/innovation/beta-testing/
http://blog.startapp.com/4-tips-beta-testing-success/
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BriceMorrison/20130514/192197/The_Truth_about_Being_a_Beta_Tester.php
https://www.google.com/search?q=beta+testing+games&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ei=nWBXU9iDJIaiyATwjoDYBg&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAw&biw=1242&bih=607#q=beta+tester&tbm=isch&facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=7IpcDJrpJNQPuM%253A%3BmncWMctLLkZoSM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fimages.wisegeek.com%252Fhands-with-game-controler-and-tv.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.wisegeek.org%252Fhow-do-i-become-a-beta-tester.htm%3B1000%3B620