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Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

Nicholas — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:15:09 -0000

In my understanding, for software development, the Alpha stage means that the code is working but not feature complete, and Beta stage means the code is feature complete and just doing bug/error testing.

An example that comes it mind is Trillian Astra, which is in private alpha because features are still being added. Once the featureset is solidified, it will move to Beta. Once bug testing in Beta is completed, it will move to a public release.

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

Guest — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:23:15 -0000

I thought that this terminology was originally adopted from industrial and product design, where an 'alpha prototype' was built to test functionality only, then a 'beta' prototype was produced with the first injection-molded pieces or metal-formed casings to work out kinks. Then the production-ready products were developed.

But isn't this also a liability issue? If a service is perpetually in 'beta', then the disclaimers for possible lost or corrupted information hold up better in court, since the service provider can claim a given user is more likely to be 'aware' that a service could encounter bugs (e.g. with 'beta' stuck on the logo on each page).

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

pedalpete — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:51:12 -0000

This discussion came up a few days ago regarding a site I've been working on.

A marketing consultant suggested that I apply a beta label to my HearWhere.com site so that visitors will know that it is still in development, and that feedback is welcome.

However, I think that
1) anybody who knows what beta means realizes that in the web-world nothing is ever complete
2) for anybody else who doesn't know what it means doesn't care - they aren't going to think "oh, it is in beta, I'll come back to see what has changed".
3) beta makes sense when you are dealing with native applications that have repercussions on the system as a whole, but that isn't necessary with the web.

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

adam — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:24:20 -0000

Years ago we would really field a Beta release but users would be under NDA or other such terms to keep results to oneself. You didn't want the adverse publicity that could arise.

Likewise journalists (pre-blogger days) as well were under the same restrictions. The last thing back then was that you wanted a buggy version colouring people's views of your product. Of course the software/sites were also paid for by subscrptions or usage so the users were really getting something for free.

Now it seems just an easy way to get a load of free testing and you mainly see freemium sites in this category. Plus of course a great way of getting a quick 100 users into the database by offering "limited" beta accounts.

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

jason goldberg — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:06:01 -0000

I agree that the early adopter crowd is generally willing to overlooking "some issues" for a newly launched service -- the worry though is a *FAIL* review by scoble or another influential blogger, and more-so the general public (non early adopter) having no patience nor understanding about tolerable bugs for newly launched services.

So, having something like "beta" indicates that it's still a work in progress.

I do also agree though that there should be a statute of limitations on "beta" and that Gmail has more than outworn its beta label.

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

Panah — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 06:39:40 -0000

Alpha software is better than Beta software.

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

Samidh Chakrabarti — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 06:05:38 -0000

Funny, I wrote a blog post complaining about this exact phenomenon last month:

http://blog.pluribo.com/200...

The basic point was that people who use the "beta" label don't really understand what software-as-a-service means!

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

Fabrice Epelboin — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:40:22 -0000

Things change, and beta is not what it used to be. I guess everything has gone backward - semanticaly speaking - so Beta is the new RC, Alpha is the new Beta, and so on... Is that such a big deal? Don't think so...

Still, you're right, Gmail shouldn't be beta anymore, and SocialMedian is bug free (as far as I can see), and should already be in Beta, it's also a very nice product ;)

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

Ian Kemmish — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:03:43 -0000

Your chart nicely illustrates the inflation of development.

Back when I were a lad, an alpha release was certainly ready for public testing, and probably broadly correlates with what you now call beta. Beta, or field test, was undertaken when the product had been completed to the best of human ability, Bugs in beta test were not expected (though inevitably found). In other words, beta encompassed all three of the bottom boxes in your chart.

So yes, one can expect that inflation will cause even more boxes to be added to your chart. But like the other recent additions, they probably won'r be called "gamma."

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

adam — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:16:41 -0000

I'm sure the only reason to call something a beta release is for PR reasons. i.e it makes the new users feel special and as if they can make a difference to the product. In reality most beta releases look pretty robust and it is just used as a term to cover up any bugs as the team can hold up their hands and say, hey, we are still in beta. Works great for blog writers too who feel they (along with the other hundred reviewers)privileged to be part of a new service.

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

Maxim Shevertalov — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:39:41 -0000

I have to agree with the previous responses. Alpha seems to be a good way to get users involved in development early so that they have some say in the direction of the web app. While this is difficult to do in a "packaged" software world, it's easy in the web world. Some people abuse it, but it's the same with anything out there. The only problem I can see is that the definitions may change and slide, as you say alpha is the new beta, but at the end of the day that's just semantics. Similar to previous comments, I have just launched Graphsy (www.graphsy.com). I am slowly expanding the number of users and have gotten good feedback so far. It is motivating to see people requesting features and painting the roadmap.

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

tobias — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:51:45 -0000

Rob, firstly i'll agree that gmail beta (for example), with a bazillion users and a proven revenue stream...is a little silly.

however, now let me defend "alpha"

I was part of an "alpha" launch this week â€“ and it feels really good to start getting user feedback that early in the cycle. I work at Me.dium and we launched our social search alpha (http://me.dium/search) on Wednesday night, letting our users know that weâ€™d "worked fast to get our product out there for you to play with, test, discuss, and let us know what youâ€™d like to see next" (http://tinyurl.com/59a7vk).

Weâ€™ve had over 100,000 people try our stuff since we launched, and the feedback has been terrific â€“ really helping us shape the "beta" roadmap and giving us plenty of tactical to-dos to bang out before then. More grandly, our users are now part of the process. They have a voice. We'll be able to build stuff they directly request. And â€“ if we keep listening and understanding â€“ we hope we'll get to a point where we're a step ahead: releasing new things we know our users will really love. Users help us, we please them. It might be terribly "enterprise software" of me to say it, but that sounds like a win-win.

Speaking of "enterprise software", I'm assuming that's where you are coming from with lines like: "in a product development company, you tend to send out beta software to your most prized customers." (Apologies if the assumption is incorrect). You then go on to say: "This gives the customer the chance to see what is coming". I'd say the reason for beta programs in enterprise software is a little more calculated than that... If you can get friendly customers to deploy a beta, this means you have canned case-studies to point at when you go GA. There's no better sales technique than letting customer A know that rival customer B is already using your stuff and gaining an advantage. If B was part of your beta program, you've probably just reduced your sales cycle to A by about 6 months. It's just good (sneaky?) business.

Either way, I'm very happy we're playing in the rapid release-feedback-release world of "alphas". It's also a lot of fun :) In short: bang it out, see what people think, iterate, and repeat.

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

jason goldberg — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:45:09 -0000

Thanks for mentioning socialmedian here.

After an internal "dogfood" phase in late March (after just 3 weeks of initial development), we determined that the best way for us to build socialmedian was to gradually expose the early service to more external users while gathering their feedback and rapidly iterating. So, we threw some half-baked software out in front of some folks and hoped for the best. We called it "alpha" because it was invite only and buggy and in many ways incomplete. Over the past 3 months, we've done 5 major releases in our alpha, with more than 300 individual ticket items. During that time we also gradually grew out invite-only users from 100 on 4/1 to a bit more than 3500 now. We'll open the site up for general use in the next couple of weeks and call that "beta" as it's still very much a work in process, but it will be generally available.

Any suggestions as to other naming structures?

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

Denise — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:22:30 -0000

I don't think you're being the least bit cranky. Not being a technical person, not much anyway, only enough to get the blog working right, I get frustrated with systems that stay in beta forever. Seems to me an easy way to avoid responsibility for bugs and not have to be in a rush to move into alpha.

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

Ray Grieselhuber — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:08:17 -0000

Good post and, as a developer and user, I certainly understand this perspective.

I've actually been meaning to write about why I decided to do a Gridjit Alpha (thanks for the mention!) and your post inspired me to do it today.

Interested readers can view a longer response on the Gridjit blog (http://blog.gridjit.com).

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

Nick — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:32:20 -0000

Quit being an old crank and get used to the idea of things changing. You can't always have everything like it was in the good 'ole days.

Re: Alpha: When Beta Is Not Good Enough

Maxim Shevertalov — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:12:57 -0000

I agree that it can be irritating to seeing well established software labeled as beta or alpha. However, I always considered alpha to be software that is not feature complete and the features that are there are buggy and can still go through drastic changes. On the other hand, to me beta has always been functionality testing and debugging. So that the UI may change but the feature set probably will not.
Though I guess those lines are blurred when dealing with web apps because most web apps go through changes.