Dogfooding: A Quick Guide to Internal Beta Testing

You are probably wondering why and how the term ‘dogfooding’ is related to software testing and the IT field. What is quite interesting is that this term has become really popular over the years and has contributed to many big improvements in software products. It has helped a lot of companies to deploy high quality software in respective markets.

In this blog post, we will provide a clear explanation of what exactly dogfooding—or internal beta testing—is.

What is dogfooding—or eating your own dog food?

The phrase ‘eating your own dog food’ or, the more commonly used term, ‘dogfooding’ may bring to mind the image of eating dog food or feeding dogs. In reality, however, it has nothing to do with dogs or food, but rather, it refers to a software testing approach used in software development where companies assess the quality of their product by using it themselves in real-world scenarios.

The term dogfooding, many believe, was coined in 1988 by Paul Maritz, a Microsoft manager, who sent an email to a test manager with the subject line "Eating our own Dogfood" with a request to increase the internal use of the company's product.

In simple terms, dogfooding is the practice of using your own products and services in a realistic environment with the same purpose and in the same way a customer would. It’s about experiencing and seeing things from users’ perspective. Specifically, people within a company—be it software developers, marketing teams, management, or whoever, really—use and test the product or service before its public release to make sure that it works as intended and to avoid any embarrassing mishaps from occuring later on. The process is similar to quality control.

Why is testing your own product important?

All IT companies want to deploy the right product for customers. Therefore, dogfooding, as part of testing in the software development life cycle, plays a key role when it comes to validation and verification of the software product. And while it is good to get objective feedback on your product, preferably from a software quality assurance service provider, testing your own product is also particularly important. To be more precise, testing your own product is significant in many segments. It is more than simply executing tests on your product in search of bugs and usability issues. Dogfooding helps with:

Building confidence and trust

When you test your own product, you gain confidence in its quality and can verify that it works as expected. It also sends a strong message to the rest of the team and potential customers that you believe in your product.

Reducing costs

No product is 100% bug-free. Dogfooding helps detect errors and bugs early on, preventing them from escalating and ultimately saves you a lot of money in the long run.

Aligning with customers needs

Meeting customers’ expectations and satisfying their needs is critical to product success. By putting yourself in your customer’s shoes, you can better understand how they use the product and align your product with their needs. A satisfied customer is half the work done.

Understanding the product better

Using your product lets you explore all of its features in depth. This hands-on approach is really important so that you and your team can gain a thorough understanding of how the product works and what can be improved and changed within it.

Enhancing marketing efforts

With dogfooding, you can enhance the user experience and improve product quality. This, in turn, leads to a strengthened brand presence, increases brand loyalty, and encourages product recommendations. By testing your own product you ensure that you release the best possible version into the market, which promotes word-of-mouth marketing. This helps retain loyal customers while generating new ones.

Testing your product or service with different types of users

Dogfooding is not limited to software testers—nor does it require specific knowledge in software testing. Instead, dogfooding focuses on getting the product out to different types of employees with different roles to best mimic real-life scenarios. This includes quality assurance teams, customer support teams, executives, product managers, user experience teams and other employees company-wide.

How can you perform internal beta testing?

As we already highlighted, dogfooding is particularly important for product development and quality assurance. It can help to identify usability issues that may not have been detected in more formal testing environments.

There are several ways to perform internal beta testing:

• Employee beta testing. Invite employees to use the product or service before it is released to the public. Collect feedback and bug reports, and use them to improve the product prior to release.
• Pilot programs. Create a small-scale pilot program for specific groups of employees to use the product. This can be done in different departments or teams to test the product in different environments.
• Forced adoption. Implement a strategy where using the product is mandatory for all employees. This can help identify any issues that may arise from widespread usage.
• Employee referral program. Encourage employees to refer friends and family to test the product. This can help get feedback from a diverse group of users.
• Gamification. Use incentives, rewards or competitions to motivate employees to use the product and share feedback.

To ensure the testing process runs smoothly, it's important to establish clear guidelines and instructions, and to have a dedicated team to manage feedback and bug reports. Additionally, it's important to have a clear communication plan with employees to keep them informed about the progress and how their feedback is being used.

What are some examples of dogfooding?

Dogfooding is implemented by many world-class companies to test their products and streamline the development process. Here are a few examples:

• Microsoft goes in the books as a pioneer of dogfooding, using the approach to improve their programs and products. In fact, almost every Microsoft product undergoes dogfooding and the process is integrated into their release culture. New versions of Microsoft Outlook, for instance, are tested through dogfooding.
• Meta is another well-known company that uses dogfooding to test new features—one popular example being when they developed their React feature and had employees test reactions on posts and videos. As reported by the company, this approach allowed them to test the stability of the code and gather valuable insights from a small group of users.
• Google, just like the other big players, uses dogfooding to develop many of their services. Google Pay is one instance where the company openly discusses the use of dogfooding.
• Lyft, as part of their dogfooding program, requires its employees to spend at least 4 hours a month behind the wheel as Lyft drivers. This allows them to better understand what it’s like to drive passengers, discover hidden gripes, and detect performance issues.

Conclusion

Dogfooding is an effective way to test products internally. It allows real-world usage of the product and can help identify issues that may not have been found otherwise. It also encourages testing in a variety of different environments and can help build a culture of quality within the company.​​

Overall, dogfooding is valuable in helping companies to improve their products and services, ensuring that they are suitable for the intended audience and making sure that employees can provide effective support and troubleshooting to users. Nevertheless, it is not advisable to rely solely on dogfooding for software testing. Instead, you’ll need to establish a structured testing process that combines various testing methods—such as manual testing, test automation, performance testing, and so on—to maintain a high level of quality assurance.

Do you have a software product and need additional support to make sure it works as intended? We can help. Contact us to learn more about our quality assurance services and expertise.