Our Philosophy
Developing bug-free, efficient, user-friendly software is our number one priority. We work hard on a daily basis to make our software more stable and useable than it was the day before. We do this through an internal design, development, and testing process that has been refined over the many years (13 as of 2010) that we have been developing auction and eCommerce software, and you are an important part of that process.
We have always felt that the customer should be involved in the design and testing processes as early and often as possible. Although we have been working with eCommerce sellers since 1997, we know that there is always more to learn from our users. Since our inception, we have strived to listen to customer input to create a tool that not only performs the tasks it is supposed to perform but does it in a way that the user expects. Our tool is truly the result of a team effort between the developers and users.
Providing a stable tool is also very important. We know that no matter how much we may test a new feature in-house, there is no substitute for running in a real-life scenario. We can create all the test cases we want, but it is very difficult to match what can be learned by running against a database with 10,000 real, running listings. We rely on our customer base to provide us with bug reports and details to help us recreate them, and in turn, can offer fixes to those bugs with an unprecedented turnaround time.
Our Testing Process
New versions of our software pass through several testing phases before they are released.
First, we perform internal testing against test plans we have written and unit tests that we have developed.
Next, we offer our software to Alpha testers to evaluate. Alpha testers are users who are chosen because of their expertise in using our software and computers in general. Alpha testers will receive the very first versions of the new software so they are most likely to find any new bugs. They may be required to uninstall and reinstall many times or revert to previous databases. Because of this, Alpha testers are expected to have a good working knowledge of computers and software and have the ability to be mild-tempered and professional when reporting bugs. It may seem like a lot of trouble, but Alpha testers have the benefit of seeing the newest additions and can have a great influence over the design and early modifications to a feature. If you would like to be considered as an Alpha tester, you can send an email to support@sixbitsoftware.com with your request.
Finally, when we feel the major bugs have been taken care of we will release it to a public beta test. Anyone who would like can download and use the beta version with the understanding that bugs may still exist. Information about the latest betas and the latest beta download can be found under the "Beta Testing" topic on the Discussion Board.
We appreciate all the teamwork we have received from users in the past and look forward to many more years of it.
