Tester program

Call for Action: Improvements Needed!

The tester program is in trouble and needs your help.

At the moment people want to join it to test one app they like. Mostly. Then the app has quirks, or does not quite work at 100% (it's under testing after all!), and this puts more support load on the team.

This means this program is really not contributing as much we'd like and does not pull it's own weight, so to speak.

We're looking for people to re-invigorate it and re-energize this program. How can we make this more exciting and contribute to have people in the program help more across apps, across bugs, etc.

The program currently has about 100 testers. Some of them active, but most of them relatively inactive. We'd like to make it fun for everyone and productive for all!

Some ideas:

• Running "app of the week" sprints for apps and all the testers testing it until it works, then we move on to the next app (maybe we vote on apps that go next)
• Providing some sort of incentive, like credits for testing (exchangeable for something TBD), or credits for bugs ...
• Divide the team in groups, and to every group you can give a task. The group that finish first gets points: 1 lead "tester", 5 -10 tester for group..
• or ... what can we do that is creative, fun for everyone and productive?

November 2010 Update: The testers program has been frozen until we find someone to help us drive it and find a formula that works for everyone.

March 2011 Update: We decided to give early access to beta apps to to Amahi Pro and Ninja users, however.

February 2014 Update: The program remains frozen. We are looking for someone to volunteer to lead this effort. If interested, please email support.

Becoming a Tester

We would like an email from you, if you would like to become a tester: email tester-program@... (amahi dot org) with subject "Become a tester", explaining your interest in the program, apps you are interested in, etc. Especially if you are willing to step up with coordination, design of the program and leadership

As outlined above, if you are willing to take a lead position to invigorate this program, that would be really really good.

If you can package apps, that is also a priority. It means you are technical and can potentially fix any issues you see with apps in testing, so that's a great contribution!

What's Involved

What does it mean to be a tester?

It means that you get to play with new apps as soon as they become beta, before they are released to the entire Amahi community at large.

Testing apps is a valuable form of contribution to the Amahi community, as apps may have small issues here and there as they become ready for release.

Testing helps the application packagers improve the applications that get released. This is very important as the applications grow. Check out the latest apps at:

     http://www.amahi.org/apps

We will make announcements about the latest apps added to the app gallery soon.

How to Become an Application Tester

If you are a contributor already (i.e. have packaged an app), you know what it takes, so you send us an email and we'll sign you right up.

Otherwise, we like to know you a bit and would like to interact via IRC, since that is the main avenue for feedback, so just let us know via IRC!

The only requirement is that you actively participate in the testing, you rate the apps (very important) and send feedback and report bugs at:

     http://bugs.amahi.org/

Thanks go to rampage and the community in the IRC channel for helping organize the apps and contributing to their testing so far, encouraging the implementation of this program! Please review the Testing page on what to test for with beta releases.