What Discovery, Alpha, Beta and Live really mean

Discovery

Understanding the problem.

Alpha

Testing possible solutions, without spending time/money/effort that might not be needed. This testing should not have real circumstances for users outside of the test.

Beta

Gradually rolling out the real thing whilst testing and iterating.

Live

Continuously improving the thing. Needs ongoing Discovery projects all the time.

These phases are not just for building software, they can be applied to making anything you want people to use.

None of these phases needs to take a specific amount of time.

These phases are not anti-agile — You’re still trying to get something Live quickly. But you don’t stop there, you keep doing more Discovery projects on all the problems you couldn’t fix the first time around.