Explain Alpha Testing in more detail | Software Testing

In this article, you will learn the following:

• What is the Alpha Testing process?
• What are the different phases of alpha testing?
• Advantages of Alpha Testing
• Disadvantages of Alpha Testing

What is the Alpha Testing Process?

It follows the following steps:

• Requirement Review: It requires the design and specification of the developed product. 
• Test Development: It is completely based on the outcome of the required review. In this phase, it develops the test plan and test cases. 
• Test Case Design: Execute the test plan and test cases in this phase. 
• Logging Defects: After performing the test cases, it logs the defects and bugs found in an application. 
• Bug Fixation: Once all the bugs are found and logged, they need to be fixed. 
• Retesting: When all bugs are resolved, we re-test the application. 

What are the different phases of alpha testing?

Alpha testing basically ensures that the software works flawlessly and does not impact the reputation of the organization. So, the company implements final testing in the form of alpha testing. It is executed in two phases:

• First-phase: In-house developers do the first round of testing. In this phase, testers use hardware debuggers to catch the bugs quickly. During the alpha testing, a tester finds a lot of bugs, defects, missing features, crashes, and docs. 
• Second-phase: In this phase, it checks the quality of the product by executing alpha testing which also involves white-box and black-box testing techniques. 

Advantages of Alpha Testing

• It helps in reducing the delivery time of the product. 
• It gives the complete test plan and test cases.
• It almost frees the team members for another project testing. 
• Feedback helps in improving the software quality. 

Disadvantages of Alpha Testing

• It does not involve in-depth testing of the software.
• The test result data may differ between the tests performed by the testing team and the tests performed by the customers.