Alpha

Alpha

The alpha's build of the software is the build to the internal software testers, that is, people different from the software engineers, sometimes to the public, but usually internal to the organization or community that develops the software. In a rush to market, more and more companies are engaging external customers or value-chain partners in their alpha testing phase. This allows more extensive usability testing during the alpha phase.

In the first phase of testing, developers generally test the software using white box techniques. Additional validation is then performed using black box or gray box techniques, by another dedicated testing team, sometimes concurrently. Moving to black box testing inside the organization is known as alpha release.

In software testing terminology alpha testing is done by the client in the presence of the tester or developers and the test environment is not open for the end user.