LSP Beta Tester Opportunity Thread

[fasteddy]

As Minleon start putting things in place for a strong future for LSP there has been a poll/thread placed over at the Minleon LSP forum seeking beta testing interest.

Now to be a beta tester you will have to show that you are a current knowledgable user of LSP with preferably 1 season under your belt and that you are willing to commit time into the improvement of LSP by reporting bugs and issues in a clear and concise manner. In the past there have been users who have joined the beta team to just put in one bug and then never be seen again, this is not what is wanted, we want committed individuals that will be part of a team that will help make LSP a stable and feature rich product for the future, in return Minleon will offer some form of compensation (to be determined) for your efforts.

By showing interest does not guarentee that you will be given a Beta testing position as all applicants will be reviewed for suitability based on many factors.

The interst poll/thread can be found here

 

[DeeJai]

Good to see they are looking for helpers, Whilst I would love to be a BETA tester, and I have added my tick on the POLL, Im sure there are alot of other's that are definately more suited then me, however, on saying that, It doesnt matter how godly you are at a piece of software, it is normally the person who knows very little that finds the bugs when they are not actually looking for them IMO.

 

[fasteddy]

.... It doesnt matter how godly you are at a piece of software, it is normally the person who knows very little that finds the bugs when they are not actually looking for them IMO.

This is very true but also issues can come about because of a lack of understanding or having expectations from coming from another software package, each person who applies will be assesed based on the needs of the LSP beta team. What is most important is commitement.

 

[DeeJai]

Oh Eddy, Im not understating the BETA testers, far from it, im just stating, that other people who may not be as proficient in LSP as others may also provide beneficial input into the program due to not knowing all of the quirks of the program.

I know you for one have found work-a-rounds for things you were trying to accomplish within LSP, now these work-a-rounds for you may now seem second nature, but, a work-a-round is not necessarily the actual way the developer intended the outcome be achieved from. Thats where those with lesser knowledge of the program would help, because i.e.

Scenario 1
User manual says press X and Y will happen.
User presses X and Z happens. (user reports to LSP)

Scenario 2
User manual says press X and Y will happen.
Eddy presses X, C, CTRL G, W and V instinctivly and achieves Y

 

[garyh]

Thanks for the heads-up... Throw my name in the hat, after 21.5 years of Avionics work in the military with some programming who knows...

 

[anon]

I've put in a tick for yes. It's pretty much what I have done at work with other projects....


Have to agree with both of you Ed and Matt. I've been on both sides of the fence. I've had software that us engineers thought was stable and logical....and then the customer arrives to test. Immediately they can crash it within the first minute as they bring a total different work flow and expectation. When you know the product inside and out you know exactly the clicks required, where a new user just bashes keys and mouse buttons.


But on the other side a recent project had at a core a piece of software that was quite flakey. This was compounded by the fact we were in Aus, they were in UK. The system was a magnitude larger than their software had dealt with before (and the cause of some of the flakiness) so could not be replicated in a test environment, so bug resolution came down to old fashioned code reviews. And that's where having software engineers analyse the software and crash and provide as much detail as possible helped getting bugs fixed, rather than just saying 'I clicked this and it crashed'. A mixture of both camps is required.

 

[fasteddy]

What we dont want to see is a whole heap of people wanting to be beta testers just wanting a free copy of LSP without actually giving anything of real value so we are looking for all varying levels of experience.

So if you are committed but dont have the listed requirements (these are only basic guidlines) then you will still be reviewed for suitability based on your hardware, system and many other factors

Again whats most important is involvement and commitment but not all can become beta testers.

 

[Beacy]

I might as well through my hat in the ring Ive been using it for the last 3 years and whilst I dont have the IT or electronics bground may be able to offer something from a non IT/electronics user perspective for the normal user. - Ive already got the full version with 2 years of upgrades so I dont need a copy lol

 

[kane]

What we dont want to see is a whole heap of people wanting to be beta testers just wanting a free copy of LSP without actually giving anything of real value so we are looking for all varying levels of experience.

I don't think anyone expects a free copy of LSP to be honest - in fact, most people wouldn't have even known that was part of the deal until you mentioned it just now.

My opinion is that there's no need to offer the free licences. And then, anyone that is willing to donate any time to do beta testing should be accepted in - the more the merrier, I think. I really can't see any downside of having an excess of people that will test things out.

 

[fasteddy]

What we dont want to see is a whole heap of people wanting to be beta testers just wanting a free copy of LSP without actually giving anything of real value so we are looking for all varying levels of experience.

I don't think anyone expects a free copy of LSP to be honest - in fact, most people wouldn't have even known that was part of the deal until you mentioned it just now.

My opinion is that there's no need to offer the free licences. And then, anyone that is willing to donate any time to do beta testing should be accepted in - the more the merrier, I think. I really can't see any downside of having an excess of people that will test things out.

Im only going on what has happened in the past. As far as what is offered by Minleon and how the Beta team is structured are still to be determined.

Agian I will say it, its commitment that is most important here and the message im trying to make is dont put your name down if your not prepared to have some commitment and involvement. We are not going to ask you to give up your day job or neglect your family, nothing more than that.

The issue with allowing as many people that want to be beta testers is being able to control what information is released and what is not, plus overloading the developers with too many bug reports with many duplications. Its quality not quantity that works best. But what i would like to see is a final beta period that is more open to the general community that would give the final check before official release, but thats just my thoughts.

 

[penguineer]

My opinion is that there's no need to offer the free licences. And then, anyone that is willing to donate any time to do beta testing should be accepted in - the more the merrier, I think. I really can't see any downside of having an excess of people that will test things out.

I disagree.

I don't use LSP and not likely to for the future, but I have worked a bit in IT......so here's my take on the beta tester thing:

Alpha/Beta testers need to be a bit thicker skinned than the regular user population. They will be given the chance to use the newest and coolest versions with the latest and greatest features before anyone else, and the possibility that the stuff they are testing may do nasty/annoying things or end up being unusable. Then they need to be able to clearly say what happened and under what conditions everything exploded so that they can be given an even newer version and try to make it break by doing exactly the same.

Your general user population can get snarky when problems keep occurring, when the faults they log aren't due to be fixed for the next month, when they are asked to try to do the same thing that deleted their sequence library last time to see if it happens again, etc.

User population should be able to log bugs, but hopefully they are the sorts of things that are not showstoppers as the really nasty stuff has already happened in alpha/beta phase.

To keep a product viable you need to make sure the really nasty stuff is sorted before it gets to the users - the users are then happy that they are getting a reasonably polished product and won't spread their bad experiences far and wide.

The bad stuff can still sneak through, but with a good variety of testers you should be able to reproduce problems quickly turning "it crashed and I need to reinstall" into "when effect X is loaded into sequence Y using comms protocol Z files a,b,c and q get overwritten with null data"......guess which issue is easier to fix?

But the beta testers do get to become experts and play with the new toys first and hopefully a few other benefits for their inconveniences......

Cheers!

 

[z_special]

I would like to help out and I realize that this is my first year and do not know everything with LSP. As a new person comes new ideas and I might see something that a seasoned person does not see as quirky. My regular job has trained me to look for things out of the ordinary and trouble shoot problems to make it run smooth. I am not looking for anything in return or benefit at this time. Just want to help make a good product great.

Zane

 

[kane]

The issue with allowing as many people that want to be beta testers is being able to control what information is released and what is not, plus overloading the developers with too many bug reports with many duplications. Its quality not quantity that works best. But what i would like to see is a final beta period that is more open to the general community that would give the final check before official release, but thats just my thoughts.

Yes, I think this is probably the biggest issue with more beta testers, but I think that this could come down to a better way of tracking bugs - Perhaps a better bug tracking system than the existing one would be worthwhile looking at - one that allows bugs to be marked as a duplicate of another, etc, and better searching facilities.

Also, once the huge backlog of bugs that has been ignored gets cleaned up, things might be a bit more manageable..

 

[kane]

I disagree.

I don't use LSP and not likely to for the future, but I have worked a bit in IT......so here's my take on the beta tester thing:

Alpha/Beta testers need to be a bit thicker skinned than the regular user population. They will be given the chance to use the newest and coolest versions with the latest and greatest features before anyone else, and the possibility that the stuff they are testing may do nasty/annoying things or end up being unusable. Then they need to be able to clearly say what happened and under what conditions everything exploded so that they can be given an even newer version and try to make it break by doing exactly the same.

Your general user population can get snarky when problems keep occurring, when the faults they log aren't due to be fixed for the next month, when they are asked to try to do the same thing that deleted their sequence library last time to see if it happens again, etc.

User population should be able to log bugs, but hopefully they are the sorts of things that are not showstoppers as the really nasty stuff has already happened in alpha/beta phase.

Yeah, I'm certainly not suggesting that every man and his dog should be a beta tester - and I think that the general consensus would be that if anyone is the sort of person that is going to get snarky when problems occur should probably not be putting their hand up to be a beta tester in the first place. I agree with what you say - they need to be prepared for bugs..

What I am saying is that a lot of people had offered their time to be beta testers, many of these users are power users (either heavy users of the app, or programmers themselves, like me).. My feeling is that the reason why these people weren't pulled in is that David was giving away free licences to beta testers, so he didn't want to be out of pocket too much.. But that is why I've suggested that there's no need to give free licences, as most people wouldn't expect anything in return..

(myself, I had already purchased my LSP licence before David asked me to join the beta test group - I wanted to help out, and that wasn't in order to get a free licence)

 

[DeeJai]

Well honestly, any BETA tester should already own a copy of LSP's latest incarnation. Perhaps instead of giving free licenses to BETA testers, discounts for updated / up version software should be on offer instead. Sure this wont suit all people to a tea, but it will help stop those people who are just in it for the freebies, plus also ensure that the right people are there for future testing.


Also agree, that no matter what the oputcome of numbers within a BETA there are, a bug tracker is definately required.