Alpha Testing Vs Beta Testing: What's the
Difference?
Alpha Testing
Alpha Testing is a type of acceptance testing; performed to identify all possible
issues and bugs before releasing the final product to the end users. Alpha testing is
carried out by the testers who are internal employees of the organization. The main
goal is to identify the tasks that a typical user might perform and test them.
To put it as simple as possible, this kind of testing is called alpha only because it is
done early on, near the end of the development of the software, and before beta
testing. The main focus of alpha testing is to simulate real users by using a black
box and white box techniques.
Beta Testing
Beta Testing is performed by "real users" of the software application in "real
environment" and it can be considered as a form of external User Acceptance
Testing. It is the final test before shipping a product to the customers. Direct
feedback from customers is a major advantage of Beta Testing. This testing helps
to test products in customer's environment.
Beta version of the software is released to a limited number of end-users of the
product to obtain feedback on the product quality. Beta testing reduces product
failure risks and provides increased quality of the product through customer
validation.
