Beta is NOT the new prod
Pink is the new black. Alexandra Kosteniuk is the new Anna Kournikova of chess. * is the new *. But beta is NOT the new prod.
I hinted at this in my last post when I said, "Openomy will be released from beta when I feel it's stable, not perfect."
I want to write this post in agreement with Sergi, to whom I responded last time. It's clear that others feel the same way.
Too many sites are coming out in beta and staying in beta for far too long. I really dislike this trend. Beta now means "polished and almost perfect, maybe missing a few features" rather than "unpolished and with bugs."
When Openomy launches shortly, it will be a version which I'm sure will crash every now and then. It will also be totally unpolished, basically presentationless. All the functionality will be there, but it won't be pretty and it will break.
That's okay by me. I want to learn how and why it broke by my users. I don't have the time, money, or space to hire people to come to my studio apartment and perform usability testing. Instead, I'll open the site to the world and let live users do my testing. As 37Signals would say, I'm working with my constraints.
As users, you should expect this behavior. Don't be upset if a page doesn't load or an API call doesn't return what it's supposed to. Instead, please just contact me and let me know what you did and what happened. I'll get right on it and have it fixed shortly.
So, please, if you're site is beta, at least let your users know why it's beta. That's all.
I hinted at this in my last post when I said, "Openomy will be released from beta when I feel it's stable, not perfect."
I want to write this post in agreement with Sergi, to whom I responded last time. It's clear that others feel the same way.
Too many sites are coming out in beta and staying in beta for far too long. I really dislike this trend. Beta now means "polished and almost perfect, maybe missing a few features" rather than "unpolished and with bugs."
When Openomy launches shortly, it will be a version which I'm sure will crash every now and then. It will also be totally unpolished, basically presentationless. All the functionality will be there, but it won't be pretty and it will break.
That's okay by me. I want to learn how and why it broke by my users. I don't have the time, money, or space to hire people to come to my studio apartment and perform usability testing. Instead, I'll open the site to the world and let live users do my testing. As 37Signals would say, I'm working with my constraints.
As users, you should expect this behavior. Don't be upset if a page doesn't load or an API call doesn't return what it's supposed to. Instead, please just contact me and let me know what you did and what happened. I'll get right on it and have it fixed shortly.
So, please, if you're site is beta, at least let your users know why it's beta. That's all.
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