How ReachOut helps research projects organize beta-testing campaigns and collect feedback from external users ReachOut is an H2020 Coordination and Support Action (CSA), aiming at helping research projects or European SMEs to develop connections with their markets and potential end users. ReachOut provides a platform and methodology making it easy for projects to create and implement beta-testing campaigns, collect user feedback and develop their ecosystem. ReachOut runs from January 2019 to December 2021. Digital Economy Industrial Technologies © OW2 2020 ReachOut is an H2020 Coordination and Support Action (CSA), aiming at helping research projects or European SMEs to develop connections with their markets and potential end users. ReachOut provides a platform and methodology to help projects create and implement beta-testing campaigns, collect user feedback and develop their ecosystem. Why a beta-testing campaign? The challenge for research projects in the area of software technologies is that, while they deliver results that are attractive because they sport sophisticated breakthrough technologies, they are difficult to access because there is a learning cost to understand the technologies and evaluate the possibilities. This is where beta-testing can help. Beta-testing fits in the overall software development process. Whether following a traditional waterfall approach or a modern agile approach, any software development process must go more or less through the following path. After a couple of steps covering requirement analysis and architecture design, projects develop and test individual functional components before integrating them into first and alpha version then a beta version before the final production version. While the alpha version is assembled for the intention of the development team, the beta version is aimed at the users. A research project will run a beta-testing in order to: • Leverage code development into an initiative that reaches out to potential users • Generate quality because a beta version usually undergoes a full cycle of internal system and usability testing • Enforce product attributes, such as packaging, tutorials, documentation, installation, on-line user support, promotion, etc. • Help identify exploitation opportunities reported by beta testers Beta-testing helps research projects in many different ways. It is a key dissemination action, it helps collect inputs into the exploitation plan. By reaching out outside of the direct project's participants, beta-testing helps build a community and discover potential new contributors. When highly successful, a beta version helps recruit early adopters, it has an impact on the market, it creates market value and develops the project's recognition. Working on a beta-testing campaign is also a way to develop "products attributes" which will make a software easier to discover by potential third-party users, partners, integrators, or complementors. How can ReachOut help? ReachOut provides tools and resources to help projects create and implement successful beta-testing campaigns, such as a proven method, proper software packages, a dedicated dashboard, a customizable questionnaire and best practices. The ReachOut platform addresses two main needs: • the necessity in a software development lifecycle to reach out with external end-users to get feedback on the features offered, and to decide about those to improve and the next to code. • the engagement for EU-funded projects to disseminate continuously about their outcomes and to raise exploitation opportunities, while creating a community of developers and contributors. ReachOut is coordinated by Fraunhofer FOKUS – the largest organization for applied research in Europe, along with UshareSoft and OW2, and runs from January 2019 to December 2021. More information: https://www.reachout-project.eu Keywords beta-testing, open source, software testing
