It is an end to end testing done by IT engineers or testing engineer seating at customers’ place where they refer to the user’s scenario to check whether the software is capable of handling it or not.
Why acceptance testing?
- Once the software has undergone unit testing, integration testing & system testing, acceptance testing may seem redundant, but it is required due to the following reasons.
- During the development of a project if there are changes in requirements and it may not be communicated effectively to the development team.
- Developers develop functions according to requirement documents on their own understanding and may not understand the actual requirements of the client.
- Some minor errors can be identified only when the system is used by the end-user in the actual scene so to find out minor errors, acceptance testing is essential.
Alpha & beta testing
Alpha and beta testing are acceptance testing types that help in building confidence to launch products in the market.
Alpha testing
Alpha testing is a type of acceptance testing performed to identify all possible issues/bugs before releasing a product to everyday users or the public. Both black box & white box testing can be used. The main aim is to carry out tasks that a typical user might perform. It is carried out in a lab environment and usually, testers are internal employees of the organization. This kind of testing is called alpha testing only because it is done early on.
For example:- When a company like Microsoft and IBM launch a new operating system in the market so they apply the alpha testing phase on software. The team consists of high-level developers to test the software in alpha testing.
There are two phases of alpha testing:
Phase 1
In the first stage of alpha testing, software engineers do the testing. They use debugger software to improve the process. The main aim is to find all the bugs as quickly as possible.
Phase 2
The quality assurance(QA) team conducts the second phase of this testing. This phase includes the black box as well as white box testing.
The main purpose of doing alpha testing is to find bugs that escaped the previous tests. Alpha testing help to detect and fix bugs that exist in the system just before releasing it for beta testing.
Advantages – Alpha Testing
- Reliability of software given at an early stage.
- The user will get complete functionality and high-quality services.
- Errors and bugs removed before the use of the software.
- Reduce delivery time for Release of the product.
Disadvantages
- The in-depth function of the software is not tested because the software is still in the development stage.
Beta testing
Beta testing is the procedure of subjecting software to test by real clients in real surroundings before its release. Can be termed as external user acceptance testing. It is released to a limited number of end-users to obtain feedback on product quality.
For example:-
Recently Microsoft corporation released Windows 10 beta and based on the feedback from thousands of users they managed to release a stable OS version. In the past, Apple also released OS X beta in public and fixed many minor issues, and improved the OS based on user feedback.
Advantages- Beta Testing
- Reduces product failure risk via customer validation
- Beta testing allows a company to test post-launch infrastructure.
- Improving product quality by customer feedback
- increase customer satisfaction
Disadvantages
- Test management is an issue. As compared to other types of testing which are usually executed inside a company in a controlled environment, beta testing is executed out in the real world where you seldom have control.
- Finding the right beta users and maintaining their participation could be a challenge.
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