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I was fortunate enough to attend the first beta test—at MLS Listings in San Jose—and I recall something really wonderful happen. It’s that feeling that that you’re watching something much bigger than yourself about to take place. I was in a progressive area with leaders from the local real estate industry all witnessing the birth of a new resource that has the potential to benefit every future user in one way or another.

Then it hit me, these leaders are pushing the boundaries for our industry. They see the changes in consumer behavior and understand that we can’t sit still. They have stepped up, not only to understand the new technology, but to provide valuable feedback on the direction of potential features and datasets. But what is it that each of the leaders see in RPR? I asked that question to each of the beta market CEO’s and here are their responses:

Our progressive subscribers appreciate the value that comprehensive, property-centric information adds to sharpen their resources and enhance the service they deliver to their clients. Our beta testers found the user interface impressive and intuitive. We very much appreciate the opportunity to support this initiative and participate in shaping its effectiveness for our subscribers’ business needs.
- Jim Harrison, President and CEO of Silicon Valley-based MLSListings, Inc.

ARMLS subscribers are very excited to be some of the first agents in the country to be able to test drive the RPR service. When we sent out the invitation to potential testers, we filled our reservations within the first day and had more on the waiting list. The agents are not only pleased about being able to research property out of our service area, but more so with the depth of information beyond MLS data they now have at their fingertips about their local market.
– Bob Bemis, CEO of Arizona Regional MLS

In managing a Multiple Listing Service staff and leadership are continually looking for opportunities to provide valuable services to our users. Through the Realtors Property Resource NAR is doing an incredible job of answering that quest by developing this valuable asset for our REALTOR members. Our leadership and staff have reviewed RPR and are convinced it will help our members be more successful in their real estate careers. That is really the bottom line – providing value to our membership. We feel privileged to be a Beta sight and congratulate NAR on their forward thinking in this outstanding Second Century Initiative.
– Rob Higgins, Executive Officer of Spokane Association of REALTORS

The leaders of the Realtor Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches are committed to bringing absolutely the best programs, products and services to our RAMB members – and the decision to bring RPR to our members first was unanimous. There was no question that RPR has a lot to bring to us now and in the future and we want to help build the best system and resource possible. We just finished our two training sessions with the RAMB beta testers on Thursday and they were extemely impressed.
– Teresa Kinney, CEO of Realtor Association of Greater Miami and the Beaches

RPR will continue its Beta roll out over the next few weeks, so keep checking back to our blog for the latest information.

I thought it might be helpful to introduce everyone in our user community to the concept of beta testing and explain it in more detail to the uninitiated. Most of the some 600 beta testers are new to the technology world, but this is where they get to join our development team. But don’t feel left out. Testing marks the start of the collection of feedback, not the end. So even if you aren’t a part of the beta, when we’re done with the testing, we are at the start of our development life cycle. We want the feedback to continue to flow.

I come from a software development background. I worked at a mapping software company with a devoted following, and it was the kind of place where people fight to be the first to see what’s coming in the new release. It’s an honor, really. These beta testers answer to the call with great verve! They provide loads of feedback to the developers, and the errors they discover and report ultimately make the final application better for everyone.

That said, beta testing is hard work. Testers have to really dive into the application to get the most out of it. And in doing so, they discover mistakes, called “bugs,” in the software and data that require developers to go back and fix things. They won’t necessarily see these fixes right away; we’ll fix them and then group a bunch of fixes together to form a new release. When we release an update to the beta site, we’ll do our best to let the testers know everything that we’ve fixed. This will help them to see how we’re progressing against the input that they have provided to us.

Testers might also find that that they do not understand how something works, and that’s called a “usability issue.” For these issues, it’s best for us to hear from the testers about what they expected to happen, and what happened instead. We’ll look for cases where users have issues or expectations in common, as those often represent a major stumbling block. On the other hand, there will be individual users who report a unique or challenging problem, which still makes a very good point, and those too will be tackled.

Finally, testers might have ideas for features that are not on the site that would be great to see there. These are called “enhancements.” A software developer loves to know what testers think the site should do or could do that it’s not doing. Since Realtors are the ones who will use this application every day, and none of us here on the product team is a Realtor, this will be the most valuable feedback we get.

Sometimes bugs, usability issues and enhancements are easy to fix. Other times, they are hard, and will take thought or time. We’ll do our best to keep everyone posted through this site about what we are hearing and how it’s coming along.

Like they say over at Google: “Testing Rocks!” So happy testing!