April 1st, 2004 is the day it became acceptable, even preferable, to launch a product as Beta. At the time, Beta products were only for early adopters who signed reams and reams of paperwork explaining how the product could blow up at anytime. Now ten years on, Beta launches are an acceptable part of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach to product development. The product changed the Beta attitude way back then was Gmail.
Paul Buchheit created Gmail based around the notion that it was grueling to search email. The popular email services at the time, Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, did a fair job but were modeled after the traditional desktop mail tools, which lacked good search. On top of that, Gmail gave users 1Gig of storage for free. That was 500x what you could get for free with a competitor.
Here’s the Dilemma
Beta and MVP go hand in hand. It’s vital to get feedback from users to see if you are on the right feature/function track quickly yet it’s equally important that your Beta product work enough to be useful. The dilemma is what’s good enough to let customers use so that you can acquire customers and eventually, have them pay you.
Case in Point
The Gmail beta lasted 5 years. Some would say that’s a bit too long considering that now, Gmail is the #2 email client behind Apple iPhone. Gmail changed the way people interacted with email because it purposely set the beta expectation. Without that expectation, it would have been a lot harder to get users to try it out.
Gmail was a radical departure from the traditional computer based inbox. It used the power of Google search to make finding an email super easy. Even better, you could store all your email without having to worry about space. Ironically, Gmail harkens back to the original terminal based email without the awesome search.
I think it’s safe to say that Gmail reignited the whole trend to more cloud based, SaaS apps. Gmail’s beta experiment set users expectations properly so that users would try the new approach and stick with it.
The Always in Beta Mentality
The always in beta mentality mentality aligns perfectly with the MVP approach since Beta implies that the product is not perfect. Customers who use Beta products love to be able to try the latest and greatest technology. They don’t mind that a feature or a function may be broken as long as the core reason they are using it still works.
Getting beta features right is an art form. Far too many companies put out a beta version that his hard to use or downright broken. One such example is Facebook Home.
Facebook Home was an application that took over your smartphones entire screen. What that did was prevent you from seeing apps on your phone. Facebook completely underestimated that people still wanted to see their apps on the desk top. One reviewer even commented that “It’s fine for a Facebook addict.” There in lies one lesson about beta — get a mix of beta users to really validate your assumptions.
Take-a-way: Get the right mix of beta users to validate your assumptions
Not Afraid to Experiment
Another aspect of a Beta product is the experimental nature of new products or features. It can be challenging to properly craft a Marketing Requirements Document (MRD) that perfectly defines what your customers want. I’m not sure a perfect MRD even exists since customer requirements can change so rapidly.
Having the attitude that experiments are just part of a products evolution will lead you and your team to push past all the excuses that can plague a rigid development process. The danger to all of this is that you are too quick to put out half-baked products or don’t listen to customer feedback. If you don’t respect a beta process, you can end up with poorly designed products that customers hate.
Take-a-way: Flexibility is essential to a beta mindset
Continuous Developer Improvement
Another good aspect of a beta mentality is that it puts into the companies development culture a continuous improvement mentality. Fostering such an attitude keeps a development team nimble and gives them permission to try ideas that might not otherwise see the light of day. It’s important that developers, designers, engineers and scientists have permission to try new things and even fail so that they can learn first hand how products are used and abused.
Take-a-way: Use a beta mentality to push your development team to try new things
Getting Beyond Beta
Beta is a great idea and more companies should embrace the practice but there does come a time where you have to grow up and as Steve Jobs would say, “real artists ship.” Of course, hardware is a little more tricky to beta since beta hardware can literally be non-functional if you mess things up enough.
Getting beyond beta requires a disciplined product release process that has to include certain levels of quality control and testing. Most likely, your beta program will have exposed all the issues and challenges your product has. These insights are valuable to feedback into your process and make your next release that much better.
Take-a-way: Setup a lightweight release process that gets you from Beta to 1.0
Ask Yourself This
- What is the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) I can release to get early customer feedback?
- Can I engage and inspire a dedicated set of beta customers to help me improve my product?
- Are there certain limitations that a beta product needs to adhere too? This is different than the minimum features of a product.
- Does management have the correct attitude about beta releases?
- Do I have criteria for getting out of beta?
- How long should I be in beta? When will I know my beta is over?
Dig Deeper
- To Launch or Not to Launch
- Facebook Home is a flop
- Gmails tenth anniversary
- Leading a team out of beta
- Skip Perfection
- Email Client Marketshare
Next Up is Up to You
This is the last dilemma we will cover. I hope you enjoyed the series. The next step in this journey is up to you. How well you navigate all these dilemmas is directly related to how honest you are about your skills and your business. Plenty of tech entrepreneurs have come up with great ideas only to drown in the quagmire of these 8 deadly dilemmas. Don’t be one of them. Use the information in this series to challenge your businesses so that you’re the 1 in 10 that makes it. Good luck!
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