Overview
Although people often get this wrong, alpha testing is before beta and then there is a final step of field testing. Alpha testing is a super important the component in achieving the desired goal of customer validation but all three testing modalities are important prior to launch and thereafter; a general practice that should continue over the life of our platform.
Goals
The goal of our alpha test is to invite customers in an effort to uncover various bugs, UI issues, defects, critical errors, feature and function gaps as well as any interoperability issues. Being siloed as tech people is one thing; garnering real world engagement is another entirely. In a structured environment, Alpha Testing is an exercise in alignment between all parties that either intend to use or benefit from the BlocBuy platform. Our end goal is reliability, security and usability.
Duration
Broken into cycles and depending upon issues discovered, we calculate approximately one week per cycle and anticipate our Alpha testing shall exceed our Beta test period by a factor of two. We anticipate some 8 cycles of testing, perhaps less.
Requirements
Post quality assurance testing, the basics requirements are that we find the platform stable and usable enough as technicians though it is not yet resplendent with a full feature set.
We targeted customers with some technical know-how as well as reliable associates whom we could monitor. The aim is to align and troubleshoot so post-launch, live support can provide needed help. It is also expected that the platform will not be free of bugs and crashing. Identifying issues that can severely limit or completely restrict functionality is critical and not something we can test in-house. Before moving on the beta, these concerns must be identified and eradicated.
Finally
BlocBuy shall deem the platform truly Beta worthy when all the primary functions perform as expected and we are void of blocking issues and our testers are no longer encountering critical errors.
We had actually some very preliminary testing in Q1 with the goal of soliciting feedback from any willing customers. While short of rigorous, some closed tests were performed in order to better understand what ease-of-use for SME’s and their prospective sellers truly looks like.
For this private alpha, we now have a better idea of what our platform needs to perform like as we were fortunate enough to work with some of our prospective clients. Here is a sampling of some of the results that date back to January/February of this year:
- 15 products were sampled
- Testing around “breaking escrow” i.e. sales totals breached the manufacturer’s minimum.
- We triggered 3rd party logistics applications with 87% success.
- Of the 13%, majority of failure was delayed orchestration of pricing.
The following is something we’d describe as fair criticism:
- Escrow feature proved challenging as timelines, minimum orders and scaling discounts were inconsistent.
- Utility viewed as investment worthy but implementation unclear.*
- Fiat on-ramp essential as well as a desire for formal KYC
- Governance model is neutral to good.
Focuses For Private Alpha Commencing On 5/20:
- Resolve identified issues bug fixes
- 3PL interoperability.
- Subscription plans
- Contract lock-up period for new clients.
We believe BBY is revolutionary because it disintermediates; removing middleman and cost-adding links in the supply chain. Using an open architecture model allows us to reduce friction across layers of commercial purchasing. Our approach is to develop a robust platform that will give rise to an ecosystem whereby our token will offer varying and ever-growing utility.
