Recently, in a discussion I came across with a ‘How to do a Public Beta of Packaged Software’ question. What came out was a list of 10 bullet points. Not that I am an expert on this topic or I have successfully ran public beta programs for million (or billion) dollar corporations — I just happened to participate in a few.
Here’s how a successful public Beta program should be run (not in any particular order of appearance):
- Public Bug Parade
- Moderated Discussion Forum
- Moderated Chat amongst Beta Participants
- Incentives to Bug submitters
- Build announcements
- Visible Change Log of Builds
- Easy Feedback form
- Incentive for Referrals
- A certificate or tchochke as a Thank You note to each Beta participant
- Beta Program should run from a community website (Sales/Marketing pitch is the last thing Beta-users are interested in)
Update: Gautham proposes the 11th step (The Microsoft way of running a successful Beta Program) — Release the code, make people pay, and then fix the bugs.
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