1. The customers probably aren\'t that representative. In the common high-tech marketing model, beta users, especially those of the \"put it on your web site and they will download\" sort, are the early adopters, those who like to tinker with new technologies. They are not the pragmatists, those who want to wait until the technology is proven and safe to adopt. The usage patterns of these two groups are different, as are the kinds of bugs they consider important. In particular, early adopters have a high tolerance for bugs with workarounds and for bugs that \"just go away\" when they reload the program. Pragmatists, who are much less tolerant, make up the large majority of the market. [Page]
客户可能不是代表。在一个普通的高科技市场营销模型中，β用户，特别是那种“将产品放到网站上让他们下载”的情况，是早期的采用者。他们喜欢摆弄新技术。他们不是实用主义者，不是那种愿意等到新技术被证明是安全可靠后才采用的人。这两种类别的使用方式是不同的，就像他们认为 bug 的重要程度是不同的一样。特别地，早期的采用者对于能够用变通方法解决的 bug和重新加载程序就能消失的 bug有较强的容忍性。但容忍性较差的实用主义者占据了市场的大部分。
2. Even of those beta users who actually use the product, most will not use it seriously. They will give it the equivalent of a quick test drive, rather than taking the whole family for a two week vacation. As any car buyer knows, the test drive often leaves unpleasant features undiscovered.
即使是那些实际使用产品的β用户，大多数也不会认真地使用。他们会给一个类似于试驾车的快速测试，而不是带着整个家庭休假两周。很多购买汽车的人都知道，试驾车经常会遗漏一些令人不愉快的特性。
3. Beta users - just like customers in general - don\'t report usability problems unless prompted. They simply silently decide they won\'t buy the final version.
β用户象客户一样，除非特别要求，一般不会报告可用性错误。他们只是暗自决定不去购买最终产品。
4. Beta users - just like customers in general - often won\'t report a bug, especially if they\'re not sure what they did to cause it, or if they think it is obvious enough that someone else must have already reported it.
β用户象客户一样，常常不会报告 bug ，尤其是当他们不能确定是什么操作导致了错误，或者是他们认为这个错误很明显，其他人肯定已经报告了。
5. When beta users report a bug, the bug report is often unusable. It costs much more time and effort to handle a user bug report than one generated internally.
当β用户报告错误时，错误报告常常无法使用。处理一个用户的错误报告比一个内部产生的错误报告要花费多得多的时间和精力。
Beta programs can be useful, but they require careful planning and monitoring if they are to do more than give a warm fuzzy feeling that at least some customers have used the product before it\'s inflicted on all of them. See [Kaner93] for a brief description.
β程序可能是有用的，但是需要仔细的计划和监督，否则它们在激怒所有β客户之前，除了带来一种模糊的、兴奋的感觉，认为至少有一些客户在使用产品之外，不会后其他收获。参见[kaner93]以获取一个简要描述。
The one situation in which beta programs are unequivocally useful is in configuration testing. For any possible screwy configuration, you can find a beta user who has it. You can do much more configuration testing than would be possible in an in-house lab (or even perhaps an outsourced testing agency). Beta users won\'t do as thorough a job as a trained tester, but they\'ll catch gross errors of the \"BackupBuster doesn\'t work on this brand of \'compatible\' floppy tape drive\" sort.[Page]
β测试有用的一种情况是配置测试。对于任何古怪的配置，你都可以找到一个使用此配置的β用户。你可以做比机构内部实验室（或者甚至是外包给测试机构）多的配置测试。β用户不会象一个训练有素的测试员一样做完整的测试，但他们可以捕捉到大致错误，像“BackupBuster在这个品牌的兼容磁带驱动器上不能工作”。
Beta programs are also useful for building word of mouth advertising, getting \"first glance\" reviews in magazines, supporting third-party vendors who will build their product on top of yours, and so on. Those are properly marketing activities, not testing.
β程序也有助于建立口头的广告，获得杂志的“第一印象”评论，支持第三方供应商在你的产品上构建他们的产品等等。这些都是正常的市场营销活动，不是测试。
Planning and replanning in support of the role of testing
计划和重新计划测试的支持作用
Each of the types of testing described above, including functional testing, reduces uncertainty about a particular aspect of the product. When done, you have confidence that some functional areas are less buggy, others more. The product either usually works on new configurations, or it doesn\'t.
上面所描述的包括功能测试在内的各种类型的测试，减少了产品某一方面的不确定性。在执行完毕后，你可以确信某些功能领域的错误较少了，其他的还比较多。产品通常将在新配置中起作用，或者是不起作用。
There\'s a natural tendency toward finishing one testing task before moving on to the next, but that may lead you to discover bad news too late. It\'s better to know something about all areas than everything about a few. When you\'ve discovered where the problem areas lie, you can test them to greater depth as a way of helping the developers raise the quality by finding the important bugs.
文章来源于领测软件测试网 https://www.ltesting.net/
