SQABD - SQA Bangladesh

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Let your End user test & add more feedback

Currently i don't know exactly how many new software companies came up in to the market within last 1 or 2 years but most of the time we find some new names showing up in BDJobs or in LinkedIn. And i notice it only when i find ppl around me changing their job or may be those companies offering their opportunity announcements in public.

Some of us are working as Outsourcing service provider, some are developing their own products. I am sure enough whoever is engaged with outsourced developments they mostly have to put their cost into Quality or Testing the product at least even if it's in minimal scope. But what happens to them who releases online services or applications in public without properly tested? Or doesn't even bother to think about Quality?

I believe we have so many companies who develops new web applications or online services - but no one ever found to put their product in beta release to vet by public users. As for example: we got Bangla blogs, Community sites, Discussion forums, and Portals which are deployed live but you are not satisfied at all or face many issues which you can't report or get any developers feedback on them.

Suddenly an email from the company "Code71" impressed me a lot. The idea is - their Agile Project management tool needs to be tested by some Agile practitioners! And definitely i believe it will improve the product more than it was in their in-house testing scope.



The more you share the more you get and the more thoughts you find the more you get matured! I personally want to congratulate Code71 to step in to this great initiative - because it will let other companies to start thinking of it with an open mind.

If you are in to developing facebook applications, community sites, online portals, e-commerce site or any other online services or if gaming applications for iPhone - then you may pick the idea with an Open mind and start fixing the issues or get the usability assessment on public feedback. It will mature you product and will let your users claim that he knows a good service/application/product which serves his interest!

Actually we are not out of numbers in different products/applications/services but we are out of quality stuff and that's why we can't claim or see the success.

3 comments:

Savita said...

I think most of the companies won't follow it but i have seen many products like open source or google, msn they come up with Beta version.

IE9 which was released in beta to fix as much as bugs possible. Few people call Pre Production testing.

I personally do not agree with a point that quality of usability will improve by announcing Beta releases. Even in production bugs will arise and it will hamper the quality of the product. Quality is very relative, it depends on individual who will use it :-)

Cheers!
Savi

Unknown said...

Your post is extremely informative. Thanks for sharing it

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Dwarika said...

Ya you are absolutely right,companies should launch beta version of their Web Application to get better feedback in various environment and this really help to make a less risk bounded product.

But there are some big companies who follow your advise since long time and before launching any product they launch beta or pre-release version to make people to find problem and those problems could be sent to them through various forums and from various channel and Before launching the product they try to cover all the major issues reported by end user..I think you would be familiar with Microsoft way of launching beta product in market.
Microsoft has created 4 lakhs of beta center to test its Windows 2000 operating system as i remember.

 
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