I develop software professionally (that means for work and being payed for it) since a good number of years and the software I write for work tends to be quite big and complex. As any complex software they will have more errors than simple software. To be able to debug and improve the quality alpha and beta tests are a must.
What are those? Alpha and beta tests are done by people outside of the development group, ideally a subset or all your future customers. Alpha are tests on an incomplete software which means not all the needed / planned feature are implemented, while beta tests are on a feature complete software which clearly contains still bugs and should not used in production.
After those phases we may release "Release Candidates" (RC for short) which should be a feature complete software which could be used in production.
Alpha and Beta phases are what allows customers to give a feedback before the software is actually finished and that allows the developers to improve the software based on direct user feedback.
Sad story however is that in my environment while I tends to always give an opportunity to my customers to test the software before it goes in production they don't pick the time to even check it. This ends up that I deliver the software at a given date and afterward I start to get reports of non-functioning parts with remarks like "didn't you tested the software before release?". Tests made by the developer himself is not as useful as an external user because the developer tends to do things the way he got them in mind, not trying side roads. Also, I cannot imagine which feature is must for a customer if they don't communicate with me.
Lesson to learn? Deliver quickly something and be ready to react quickly to your customers when they start to use your tool.
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