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All the testing levels that we've seen so far is what
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we can call developer's testing. So that's testing that is performed
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either within the testing organization, or by somebody who's doing like
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third-party testers on behalf of the testing organization. But there are two
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other kinds of testing that are worth mentioning that are also
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related to testing phases and these are alpha and beta testing.
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Alpha testing is the testing performed by distributing a software system
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ready to be released to a set of users that are internal
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to the organization that developed the software. So you can consider these
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users as, if you pass me the term, guinea pigs that will
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use an early version of the code and will likely discover errors
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that escaped testing and will have made it to the field if
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not caught. Beta testing is the next step after alpha testing, in
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which the software is released to a selected subset of users, in
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this case, outside your organization. And also in this case, the users
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are likely to discover latent errors in the code before it is officially
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released to the broader user population, so before we have an
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actual product release. So you may wonder why do we need
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to do both alpha and beta testing. Why not just one
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of the two? The reason is that alpha testing is performed
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to iron out the very obvious issues that still escape testing,
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but we want to do that before involving people outside your
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organization. And the rationale is that alpha testers have a higher
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tolerance for problems than beta testers, who expect a mostly working system.
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