I know that as a software developer I often work off of a vocabulary that isn't familiar to folks that aren't in my line of work (lucky, lucky folks) and though I try to minimize this, it still happens from time to time.  One of the things I'm bad about is speaking casually about the software development cycle.  This is the process by which software is designed, implemented, tested, and released.  There are a lot of formal definitions out there if you're interested, but as project with a single designer, engineer, tester, and product manager, the formal definition becomes much more of a rough guideline than a reality.

Specifically we throw the words "alpha test" and "beta test" around quite a bit.   Here's a nickel definition of each:

• Alpha Test:  Alpha testing is the first phase of software testing usually by in-house testers, developers, and users.  On occasion outside people are brought in, but the application is by no means complete from a feature perspective, stable, or even working at all.  The purpose of alpha testing is to find serious errors and other bugs in the application.
• Beta Test:  Beta testing is the second round of testing often including an increasingly large group of actual users to determine how usable the application will be to real consumers.  The application is generally somewhat feature complete and reasonably stable but can still have features lacking, have significant errors and stability issues.  The purpose of beta testing is to solicit feedback on application functionality and features while having errors and other problems reported back to the developers.

Those are my personal definitions, but I think they'll hold up pretty well against the more formal definitions out there.

Right now we're calling you newer folks Beta Testers.  In reality, we're probably somewhere closer to in-between; not quite alpha and not quite beta.  There are still a number of launch required features that will be added before we go into production, the interface is still clunky, performance a little too slow, etc.  In general not quite what I would personally consider beta level.  However, even as such we are still on par with our peers from a functionality standpoint and Gwen and I are both very excited to get this thing in front of people and get feedback on what they like, don't like, think is broken, etc.  So maybe we're moving a little fast with what we're calling things, but we are really using your feedback to try and build a better, more personal application.   We really are taking your feedback and using it as we plan the future direction of SweepsU.com.

Now that all this is said there are two reasons I wanted to say it.  The first is that even though we're offering use of the product for free, we do desire your participation in the discussion; we WANT to hear what you like, don't like, about errors you've found, etc and I think we've been very good so far in being responsive.  The second reason is that I am beginning to feel as though some folks are becoming frustrated.  I think this is primarily due to a misunderstanding about where we are in the process.  That we are testing an application that we KNOW isn't finished, doesn't work 100%, isn't pretty, etc.

Hopefully that helps clarify things just a little bit.   This is a part of our business that is both frustrating from time to time and extremely rewarding the rest of it.  It is really and truly fun to see you guys using the application, responding to us in the forums and blogs, and helpful when you let us know that something isn't quite right or comment on features and aesthetics.

If you have any questions or comments about this (or anything else ; )  please do leave a comment to this post or in the forums and we'll be happy to continue the discussion.

Thanks!

Gerald