What Is an Alpha Test? Definition and Overview
July 26, 2021 Max 4min read
What is an Alpha Test?
Alpha test is a type of user acceptance test conducted at the internal level of the company by the in-house testing teams in a laboratory environment. Like any other testing, the aim of the alpha test is product refinement through bug fixing, error identification, and tweaking.
Alpha testing is done before beta testing. Alpha test is performed to ensure the functionality of the product features before revealing it to the users by beta testing and launch.
The testing procedure can be black-box testing in which the tester is unaware of the feature or design element that is being tested or it can be white box testing where it is known to the tester what features, designs or internal structure is being tested.
The testing team is independent and conducted in a simulated environment by internal testers that consist of stakeholders, members, etc. They analyze the performance and functionality of the product based on test cases and tasks that are included in the product’s service.
Conducting an Alpha Test
Alpha testing is conducted by quality assurance, development teams, and tested by internal testers that consist of stakeholders, developers, and other employees so as to ensure more and more in-house testers are involved and better feedback is collected.
The test cases and tasks are divided into testing categories from which different groups of testers conduct targeted testing to ensure all-around examination of the overall software product.
The issues encountered by the testing groups are reported to the development teams. The testing cycle continues through re-testing and is concluded and passed on to the beta stage when no other feature is required to be added to enhance the product performance and capabilities.
Steps involved in Alpha Testing
Steps in the Alpha testing process are as follows:
Requirement analysis
This is the initial step where the design specification is reviewed to figure out all the functional and nonfunctional requirements of the software.
Test planning
Following up with the requirements analysis of the test development plan is created to mark out all the test cases.
Test case execution
Now, the test plan and cases have been laid out. The alpha testing begins from here. The plans and cases are implemented. The major objective is to tweak bugs and errors in the software system.
Issue logging
When an issue or a bug is identified in the software, it is logged in a separate system.
Bug fixing
After the bugs and issues are tracked and logged the developers work on them to fix it.
Retesting
This is the concluding step in which after the issues and bug fixes are done, the testers carry out the testing procedure once again. This process goes on till there remains no further issues or bugs in the software.
Phases of Alpha Test
In the first phase, the in-house software developers make use of debugging tools to trap the bugs in the program. This phase also targets other issues regarding the features.
In the second phase, the black box and white box testing methods are invoked by the quality assurance (QA) team. The process of issue-resolving is carried out parallel to the testing where issues are found out.
Advantages of an Alpha Test
- More intuitive knowledge can be gained about the software’s reliability and serviceable capability at the initial stages.
- The involvement of both black and white box testing helps in identifying the product’s strengths and the weaknesses thoroughly at an all-round level. Black box testing works for the input-output functions and white box testing is to examine the internal design of the software.
- Feedbacks and checks at an initial stage supports product refinement before it is exposed to any real users. The testing environment is a simulation of the real world conditions with the same kind of tasks.
- Through alpha testing the development team can observe and get an idea in advance of the software’s response and functioning while serving the end users, its reliability, and accountability.
- As the issues are tracked in advance, the development re-work and the delivery time is reduced.
Why should Alpha Test be conducted?
Product refinement and excellence through feedback collection and analysis is the main objective of any kind of product testing.
Through alpha testing, the product aspects are analyzed in a simulated environment that resembles the real user conditions and test cases that help the development teams to understand what fundamental changes are to be made to the product and to validate the product’s functionality and efficiency before it is exposed to the end-users.
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FAQs
Alpha testing is not comprehensive enough as the testing environment is a virtual simulation of real-world user conditions. It focuses more on the production-related issues, usability, and performance, but it has limitations on areas like in-depth security or reliability.
For alpha testing, internal testing groups are formed within the organization that consists of stakeholders, developers, and other employees involved in the product development process.
The major difference lies in the process and timing of both the tests, where alpha test is done, initially and internally, to pick out and fix bugs and issues related to the functionality before releasing the software to the users, in a simulated environment.
Beta test is done by real end-users, so it is an external test conducted under a real-world environment. The beta test is the final phase of product testing that is done before the launch.
An alpha test is an internal test conducted within the company at the developer’s site.