On Jan 3, 2010, at 11:27 AM, Todd Blanchard wrote: > .On Dec 31, 2009, at 11:00 AM, gairbheil wrote: > >> But I've become more a fan of betaing early and betaing often, >> myself; having worked both ways, I find that the more complete my >> app is when I first release a beta, the less flexible I am to make >> changes and the less useful the app is to my users. On the other >> hand, if we release a beta that's just complete enough to basically >> work and to give the users a sense of what's possible, we get >> invaluable feedback that shapes the direction of the app from that >> point on, which makes the app more useful for everybody. Also, if >> users find performance issues that we've missed, they tend to be >> easier to fix early on. > > There's nothing wrong with that - but this early phase you describe > is traditionally called "alpha".
Alternatively, this could be considered "preview". We (and I think many others) use preview releases to get non-feature-complete versions into user's hands for feedback before everything else is done. Personally I find this very useful, although one does need to carefully manage expectations. Michael
