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Mo' Beta Testing Blues
theodp writes "Wired picks up on the observation made by Jason Fried that more and more sites and tools are launching and remaining in 'beta' mode. Prominent sites like Google News, A9, Froogle, Friendster, Tribe, and Orkut all sport 'Beta' disclaimers. Is this to get users to do the testing, a subtle way of saying 'don't expect support', or simply a marketing ploy to generate buzz by making users feel 'exclusive'?"
It's quite simple actually:
:) (in the software I mean :) )
today you have to develop things fast
faster development = more bugs
beta version= decreased liability (because of the bugs) while still collecting profits/'name-building'/etc
For example Google API is in a 'forewer beta', they state: "The Google Web APIs service is currently in beta form and has not been fully tested or debugged. Accordingly, Google disclaims any responsibility for any harm resulting from your use of Google Web APIs. "
Imagine if a bridge building company would say something like this. It's plain scary. I mean, get some IT marketing guy and he'll find a way how 'the drivers should do the initial bridge testing'.
What's scary is that even the free projects lately are starting be quite-Beta-excusable for the bugs. Which is bad, since, as we all know, there isn't any valid excuse for having bugs
Now, the thing to do is to patent this Beta concept for selling out half baked potatos for the full price, if you live in Europe that is.
If something goes wrong, you can't blame the site. It's beta. If the product sucks, it shouldn't (theoretically) be able to tarnish the name of a great such as Google. Takes all the risk out of it.
But whether Google's API works or not is simply an annoyance. The bridge can kill people (or try to teach them to fly, depending on how you look at it).
You need to save that analogy for the air-traffic control and space shuttle software. Which, by the way, is not released in beta form.
Actually, the strict defenitions of alpha and beta testing are internal (developer) and external (customer) testing, respectively, prior to release of a product.
using the term "beta" gives a clear impression that everything is mostly there, but there is more work to be done.
I would much perfer a site say they are beta instead of putting out non working features.
You're not paying for these sites, so what do you expect?
Open source software does this a lot as well. And it touches stuff that I use right now: the Scons build system is stuck at version 0.95. Mozilla Thunderbird is at version 0.6. Mozilla Firefox is at 0.8. Does this mean that there's anything glaringly wrong about the functionality that they provide? No. It means that there may be a couple of rough edges and that work is still ongoing to finish less important features and to polish up the project. If they were boxed products on the shelf I'd be upset, but since I paid a total of $0 - and they work for me - I don't care what the version number is.
Anyway, I think this is a reflection of the development model more than anything else. Commercial software tends to have a "really big design up front", followed by a bunch of milestones to implement. Open source software (and web-based applications like Google) tend to be more organic. More a work of sculpting one feature at a time than a messy work of planned burocracy. The features that are important tend to be implemented first. And given that the core 10% of most software's features is used 90% of the time - this isn't a problem to most users.
Maybe its the result of a constant demand for newer versions and features.
Many companies (mine included) are under constant pressure to release new products with more features. Often this means that instead of fixing bugs making products better, we are working on the next release.
Perhaps the constant *beta* is a marketing ploy. Tell people its beta and they can't complain when bugs are found. So what if the product never comes out of beta.
Classic example. Has there ever been a non-beta version of ICQ?
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
I tried the 2.0 interface too and opted out instantly. Now I'm stuck with it like you. I think it's the default interface now, and the old one is gone for good. Actually when you get used to it, it's not that bad.
Anyway, I actually replied to tell that eBay/PayPal sucks as a company. They don't care for the users, their eBay and PayPal fees are quite high, they do not stop increasing the profit volume and they do not make fees cheaper.
I sometimes buy stuff in eBay, and some guy ripped me off. I bought several singles from the same seller with the 'buy it now button' for like 10 euros each one, the total amount was 65 euros. I sent the total amount in a single PayPal payment and the seller was supposedly combining shipping.
After two and a half months of excuses (lost in post...), bad feedback for the user started appearing like an avalanche (he had a lot of good feedback before that). So I applied for the buyer protection program. What they told me: the items you bought must have cost *each* 50 euros or more for eBay to refund you the money (there is an upper limit too).
If every good auction weren't on eBay, I'd stop using it right now.
The sites mentioned, as well as Spymac ( first with 1 GB email), exist as proofs of concept with a presumption of falsifiability. There was no way to know beforehand if they'd be viable, no way to test if they'd fail without putting them on the road. This is in contrast to the dotcom burnrate days, when every concept was presumed roadworthy from the moment of conception on a cocktail napkin. Beta is a good thing, it's a sign of maturity (ironically enough).
1. Microsoft has made shit the industry standard.
2. Plan and code has been changed to 'guess and check'
3. Companies want to see if somthing will be popular and generate revenue before they put money into making it work.
4. Another way of disclaiming liability.
5. Sounds 'techie.'
6. Peer pressure.
7. People want customers to help with debugging.
8. Change is constant. So is Beta testing.
9. Dotcom crash has scared people. Folks want to 'see the money' as soon as possible.
10. Companies realize that because of revisions to UCITA, enforcement of shrinkwrap liscenses, etc. that they're not going to be held liable for the problems that they cause, above the price a customer has paid for the product which is almost never enough to justify any kind of lawsuit in the first place.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Although beta testing is an somewhat important phase in the software and testing life cycle, it is not one you should depend on too heavily. A test plan should be developed after the requirements have been put together and all testing should be executed in each of the phases of the project, being flexible enough to change as possibly new requirements enter the project. Testing of software is usually done poorly and many projects have little focus on the testing process. It's not necessarily the most fun process, but one that is important and should be done by a highly skilled team that is both creative and smart. If your project is relying on beta testing to find a substantial set of errors and defects in your software, your software is probably doomed.
Software engineering really is that, engineering, but it is often not looked at this way. Writing code is the easiest part of it all but many steps and procedures should be used to ensure the highest quality and robustness of software possible. We have way too many under-educated, non-read and undisciplined developers/managers that really need to observe other fields of engineering, such as civil enginering/construction to see what we need to do to make software development of higher quality.
I will now step down from my soap-box.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
I don't understand this beta nonsense. Once it's launched, it's launched I'd say. It's fine that Google labels GMail as beta since it's relatively closed at the moment and hasn't had a "proper" launch yet.
Google News, on the other hand, might as well use a stupid animated "Under Construction" gif for their pages, since it seems to be in perpetual beta. The service launched (ie. left the Google Labs) all the way back in September, 2002 !
Beta testing doesn't mean "under development", it means "in a testing phase that includes customers / users". So, saying that software is always in beta because it's always in development is incorrect. Also, software is not always in development. Plenty of software apps are abandoned or put on life support (bug fixes only but no new features) by their owners.
A project that always adds features and fixes bugs at the same time is a very badly managed project. Beta testing is a phase in the software development lifecycle. It's a cycle for a reason: people want features and don't want bugs, but new features introduce new bugs. Every time you add features, you have to text and fix and get it back to a point of stability.
Any decently managed project has a cutoff period where new features are not allowed, so that bugs can be fixed to a point where the team decides that it's OK to release the software. Sometimes this is an ad-hoc decision balancing bug counts with market pressure, and sometimes it's just a threshold of bug counts of various severities. Then, when the release is done, the feature wish list is examined and the feature list for the next release is set.
Open source projects that rely mainly on code donors still do this, but they don't necessarily know exactly what features are going into the next version since they can't predict what code will be donated. Still, the folks managing the project must at some point decide that a release is needed, and work toward a stable, release-worthy point, or else the project will just be an ongoing death march of brokenness and half-completed features.
Beta means that the project team doesn't think that the code is releaseable yet, but it's past the point of feature cutoff, and past the internal testing phase. They're giving the users a chance to beat on the software to find any esoteric bugs that internal testing missed, before telling the world that the software is believed to be stable and correct.
However much the designers of something try and test it, there is nothing like throwing a few thousand misguided, ignorant, diverse users (who didn't bother to read the help) at a site/piece of software. Preferably all at once. It's a damn good way of testing something; and hell they're free - so we can hardly complain!
This practice of releasing software before it's ready is hardly a new one. What do you think Windows 1.0-3.1 were? 3.11 finally was release quality software, though it still stunk. Apple did the same damn thing with OSX. 10.0 was Alpha quality software at best, with 10.1 being beta quality.
The point is that I don't think companies are releasing software any earlier than they used to, they're just being more honest about the quality of it. Google news still being beta means they can mess around with it and not piss anyone off. The article seems to imply there's something wrong with lowering peoples expectations.
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