The Pocketsmith Alpha is finally live! We have been up almost all night getting this first version ready and we are excited to present early Pocketsmith-enthusiasts the application for testing! It is now time to stand back and look at what we have done good and more importantly what we should improve in the future.
5 things we could and should have done better:
- Did not evaluate properly the workload left. I still remember us a week ago being sure we had heaps of time to get it done. Yeah. Right.
- Did not respect the planning we were supposed to follow. We did decide together we will have a least a buffer day after testing. We ended up still testing the app 2 minutes before sending the email to our alpha testers.
- Did not set up a testing protocol. That is such a newbie mistake ahah. But I guess this is what you should expect with a Frenchman in charge of this job!
- Adding features at the last minute. I swear we tried not to! Unfortunately having high expectations for this version means we wanted to make it as useful as possible.
- Assuming that starting on the first day of August would not have a major impact. That was bad. I mean bad bad. 10 minutes after the first notice to the alpha testers, I spotted a serious bug related to the date. Yes, we fixed it within twenty minutes but stress levels were pretty high for that period!
5 things we managed well:
- Set up our expectations very high from the beginning. Targetin high helps us to push the boundaries. We have reached this step in 5 weeks. Let’s see what we can do in 10!
- Release an Alpha version early with limited number of trusted testers. This step is important as we gather crucial feedback early on the track before facing the “big test” of a public alpha release.
- Select a broad pool of alpha testers from various age, gender, occupation and localization in the world. That will give us enough marketing materials to play with
- Survive the intense pressure associated with this release. We had some pretty intense moment of stress following nasty bugs and unexpected delays.
- React fast to the running balance issue. James and Jas have been impressively quick finding a fix. We also took the time to inform the testers about the evolution of this issue. We love our users!
We have had 3 very intense days and I think it is now time to get some rest. This week end will be perfect to stand back and come back on Monday with awesome new ideas!
[...] 10 lessons learnt from the Alpha release… [...]
[...] strategy for the Private Beta release is a little bit different to the Alpha. While we really sweated it out in the final hours of the Alpha, we decided that this should be a slightly better-managed occasion. [...]