What is Alpha testing anyway?

You, as an Alpha tester, will be testing the AT&T TV Beta experience and therefore will have early access to pre-production software builds.  The updates typically occur at the end of the 2-week Sprint cycle, but there may be hot fixes to address high-priority bugs and therefore there may be several update notifications during each Sprint.

Basic Understanding

System tests are first performed internally by the development teams before it moves to the Alpha testing phase.

  • Alpha testing is carried out in a controlled test environment and will vary by the device (e.g., TestFlight for iOS and tvOS devices, etc.)
  • Alpha testers are asked to test the app's functionality and usability.
  • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are actively monitored to help identify any issues across various metrics, such as app start-up time, etc.

As an Alpha tester, my weekly Testing Goals are:

  1. To evaluate the quality of the product.
  2. To ensure Customer readiness.
  3. To focus on finding bugs and testing new features.
  4. To ask, "Does the product/feature/function work?"
  5. To help uncover bugs that were not found during previous testing activities.

Test Duration:

  1. Each test cycle typically lasts for 1-2 weeks.
  2. Within the 1-2 weeks test cycle, it is not uncommon to receive several Alpha app releases.  Other variables affecting the Sprint test cycle may be based on the number of issues discovered and the number of new features released within that Sprint.
  3. Duration also depends on the number of issues found and the number of new features added.

Expectations:

  1. Critical bugs should be fixed and retested.
  2. Team response to Alpha Tester feedback