Question

My team will soon be launching a web app in Beta. At what point does the Beta tag need to go?

Google seems to hold on to the Beta tag for a long time while others do it for a month or so. Is there some rule of thumb like all known bugs fixed to follow or a time frame or some other methodology for this?

Of course when Beta is gone then money can be made so how does development relate the importance of a beta period to management?

I am wanting to know what are/is the criteria that should be used for a Beta to be marked complete. Not when we are ready but when the app is ready.

Answer 1

While agreeing that there’s no formal definition for ‘beta’ I’d argue that it should be reasonable to assume that a web application’s transition out of beta is when the developers think that it’s in a state where it’s fully usable by its target audience — not that it’s never going to change, but that people aren’t in general going to be waiting on a feature to be finished or a bug to be fixed before they can use the website.