What is Dogfooding?
a Complete Guide 🦴

In software development, the term Dog food means something different. It is not about dog food or toys. It refers to software developers and companies using their own products and services, just like their customers do. In this article, we will help you understand what dogfooding is, explain why it matters. How to do Dogfooding testing well, and what challenges you might face 😉

Dogfooding Essence in Business & Software Development

Imagine a chef who will not taste their own dish. It makes you think, does not it? The same idea applies to businesses that do not use their own products. Consuming your own software products or services, often called Dogfooding. It shows how much a company believes in what creates. Dogfooding helps the development team see and experience the product directly.

Dogfooding purpose

Dogfooding, or “eating your own dog food,” means using your company’s products or services within your own team before its public release. This helps you see what your customers see. You can find out what problems they face and find ways to make things better. This is common in the software world, where developers use their own tools to understand how users experience them.

The main goals of dogfooding are to:

• Improve Product Quality. When internal teams use the product often, they can spot bugs, glitches, or usability issues early in the development cycle.
• Better User Experience. Dogfooding helps you get a good look at the product’s design and flow from a user’s viewpoint.
• Speed Up Product Development. Internal feedback from dogfooding can make the development process faster. Problems are found and fixed more quickly.

How does dogfooding relate to quality assurance (QA) and testing?

The true start of the term “dogfooding” is unclear. However, it became well-known in the tech industry during the 1980s. One common story points to Microsoft executive Paul Maritz, a Microsoft manager. He supposedly asked a test manager to make sure more people used their products. He did this in an email called “Eating our own Dogfood.” No matter where it came from, the idea matches with other sayings like “drink your own champagne” or “eat your own cooking.” The main point is that companies should use and trust the products they make.

Types of Dogfooding

Dogfooding can vary in form depending on the purpose and scale. Here are a few common types:

• Internal Dogfooding: In this scenario, a company’s employees use the product in their daily operations, testing it rigorously within the organization. This can reveal critical issues before releasing the product to external customers.
• External Dogfooding: Some companies allow a limited group of users, often tech-savvy customers or trusted partners, to use early versions of their products. This approach expands the testing environment to include real-world feedback while keeping the product semi-private.
• Parallel Dogfooding: Here, the company uses the product alongside existing alternatives. Employees might split time between the new product and a competitor’s tool to identify key performance or usability differences, helping refine the final product before a full release.
• Continuous Dogfooding: This ongoing process involves using the product consistently within the organization to help drive iterative improvements over time. Continuous dogfooding is often part of a company’s agile or DevOps approach, ensuring the product remains relevant and up-to-date.

Dogfooding vs. Beta Testing

The origins of the term “dogfooding” are somewhat murky, though it became widely recognized in tech circles during the 1980s. A popular story credits Microsoft executive Paul Maritz, who reportedly sent a memo titled “Eating Our Own Dogfood,” urging his team to use Microsoft products internally to enhance their quality. While both dogfooding and beta testing involve using pre-release versions of a product, they serve different purposes.

Dogfooding is internal, focused on aligning a company’s product with the needs and expectations of its employees, while beta testing usually involves external users who provide feedback from a customer’s perspective. Beta testing provides insights into how users may respond to the product, while dogfooding signals the company’s own confidence in its product.

Overall, whether you call it “dogfooding,” “drinking your own champagne,” or “eating your own cooking,” the philosophy remains: companies should have faith in their products by being their own users, validating quality before they reach customers.

The Importance of Dogfooding for Product Development

Dogfooding is very important for creating great products that connect with users. When companies use their own products in real work, they learn how well these products work and find out how to improve the user experience.

This practice helps build a culture focused on quality and meeting customer needs. It ensures that products are thoroughly tested and improved before they get to users. As a result, it leads to happier customers, better brand loyalty, and a stronger advantage over competitors.

Enhancing Product Quality and User Experience

Dogfooding is more than just routine quality assurance checks. These tests are important, but they usually happen in controlled settings. This means they might not show how users interact with the product in real life. Dogfooding helps fix this problem.

When employees use the product in their everyday work, companies can find hidden usability issues and design problems. They can also identify workflow delays that might be missed otherwise. This process creates a stronger and more user-friendly product that makes customers happy and builds brand loyalty.

Building Trust Within and Outside the Organization

Dogfooding is more than just making better products. It encourages a culture of openness, responsibility, and teamwork. When leaders use and support their own product, it shows everyone how much they believe in its quality.

This builds trust in the company’s promises. This sense of openness goes beyond just the teams inside the company. When customers see that a company truly uses its own products, it creates a feeling of realness and trust. These qualities are very important in today’s tough market.

Implementing Dogfooding in Your Organization

To set up a good dogfooding program at your company, you need a clear plan. First, make a straightforward way to start this product management program. Then, get people from different departments involved, not only the development team. This will help you get different views. Most importantly, create an environment where feedback is valued. See feedback as a chance to grow and improve.

Identifying Areas for Dogfooding

Not all products or features are the same when it comes to dogfooding. The main idea is to find areas where internal use can give valuable insights and help solve customer pain points better. Start by thinking about the main functions, workflows, or features that matter most to the product’s value. Internal feedback in these areas can greatly improve customer satisfaction. Also, focus on features or products that are getting big updates, redesigns, or are in beta testing.

Setting Up a Feedback Loop for Continuous Improvement

A strong feedback system is key to successful dogfooding. If there is no organized way to gather, analyze, and act on employee feedback, the process loses its value. It can turn into just a formality. Create clear ways for employees to share their thoughts, ideas, and issues.

Online surveys, special communication tools, or regular feedback meetings can help. However, just collecting feedback is not sufficient. Make sure that feedback is recognized, quickly handled, and included in the plans for the product’s ongoing improvement.

Who Should Participate in Dogfooding?

Dogfooding works best when employees from various departments, roles, and levels within a company participate. Here’s a breakdown of who can contribute effectively:

• Product Development Teams: Developers, designers, and product managers are primary participants, as their direct feedback helps improve functionality, usability, and performance. Their firsthand experience using the product can uncover technical issues early on, making it easier to resolve before release.
• Customer Support Teams: Since customer support representatives understand common customer pain points, they can test the product while simulating real user issues. Their feedback is particularly valuable for ensuring the product is user-friendly and identifying potential challenges customers might face.
• Sales and Marketing Teams: These teams can assess the product from a messaging and positioning perspective. Their feedback can help refine the product’s value propositions, align it better with market expectations, and shape marketing strategies.
• Executive and Leadership Teams: Having senior leadership use the product not only demonstrates a company-wide commitment but also ensures top-level insights are considered in the product’s development. Leaders can provide feedback on strategic alignment and highlight areas for improvement that align with the company’s goals.
• Cross-functional Employees: Encouraging employees from various departments who are not directly involved in product development to use the product helps capture fresh perspectives. Cross-functional dogfooding can reveal unexpected usability issues, as these users approach the product more like an average customer would.

By involving a broad spectrum of employees, dogfooding provides well-rounded feedback, leading to a more robust, customer-aligned product. It also creates a culture of ownership and accountability, as employees feel invested in the product’s success and are more likely to advocate for its improvement.

What is Dogfooding in Product Management?

In product management, dogfooding is the practice of having product managers and team members use their own product to evaluate its quality and usability firsthand. By using the product in their day-to-day work, product managers can identify pain points, areas for improvement, and unanticipated use cases that may not emerge during traditional testing phases. This hands-on approach allows product managers to validate the product’s alignment with customer needs and make data-driven decisions based on real user experiences within the team.

For product managers, dogfooding serves as a continuous feedback loop, helping to shape the product roadmap by surfacing issues and prioritizing features that will improve the customer experience. Additionally, it reinforces a sense of ownership and accountability, as product managers can directly influence changes based on their own insights, driving a higher level of confidence in the product before it reaches the market.

Dogfooding in UX Design Testing

Dogfooding plays a crucial role in UX (User Experience) design testing, where designers and team members experience the product as end-users would. By “living the user experience,” designers gain deeper insights into the product’s usability, navigation, and overall appeal. This approach helps them identify friction points and intuitive flows that may not be apparent in wireframes or prototype reviews.

Incorporating dogfooding into UX testing ensures that the design team can assess how their decisions impact actual use, often revealing overlooked details in layout, accessibility, and interaction. Moreover, it empowers designers to refine elements like button placements, fonts, and color schemes based on real interaction feedback. Overall, dogfooding in UX design testing provides a more empathetic and practical understanding of the product, leading to a more polished and user-friendly final design.

Measuring the Overall Impact of Dogfooding

Testing on a Product To understand the effectiveness of dogfooding, companies need to measure its impact on product quality, user satisfaction, and overall development processes. Here are key metrics and methods for evaluating dogfooding’s impact:

• Bug and Issue Resolution Rates: One of the clearest indicators of dogfooding’s impact is the number of bugs identified and resolved prior to external release. Tracking the frequency and severity of issues found through dogfooding helps measure its effectiveness in improving product stability and functionality.
• User Satisfaction Scores (Internal): Internal satisfaction surveys among employees participating in dogfooding can reveal insights into usability and product alignment with user needs. Regularly gathering feedback on user satisfaction provides a benchmark for product improvement and offers valuable data on how well the product meets expectations.
• Feature Enhancement Suggestions: A successful dogfooding program often generates suggestions for feature enhancements and optimizations. Tracking the number and types of improvement ideas from internal users helps quantify how dogfooding contributes to product innovation and alignment with user needs.
• Time to Market: By identifying and addressing issues early in the development cycle, dogfooding can reduce the time spent on post-release bug fixes, accelerating the product’s time to market. Measuring any reduction in development and testing cycles helps assess dogfooding’s impact on overall product development efficiency.
• Customer Support Case Reduction: When dogfooding catches issues that might have otherwise reached end-users, it can lead to fewer customer support inquiries. Monitoring support case trends after the product release can reveal if dogfooding effectively minimized common user issues, thus reducing support costs and improving the user experience.
• Employee Engagement and Buy-In: Dogfooding often fosters a sense of ownership among employees, increasing engagement and enthusiasm for the product. Employee participation rates and feedback can be measured to assess how dogfooding enhances company-wide support for the product, which often translates into a stronger internal advocacy for continuous improvement.

Dogfooding in Test Management and QA

Dogfooding in software development is the practice of a company using its own products internally to test and demonstrate the quality and capabilities to potential customers. This helps in identifying flaws, improving user experience, and building trust as the company is confident in what they offer.

Challenges and Solutions in Dogfooding

User experience can greatly improve with a good dogfooding program. Although dogfooding has many benefits, companies may face some challenges when putting it into action. It’s important to know these problems and to have plans to deal with them. Open communication and strong support from leaders are crucial. Also, creating a culture where everyone shares the responsibility can help solve these issues. In the end, when a dogfooding program is done well, it can make products better and improve the user experience.

Overcoming Resistance and Encouraging Participation

One of the biggest problems companies deal with is resistance from workers. Some people see it as more work added to what they already do. Others might feel unsure about giving negative feedback because they worry about facing consequences. To fix this, it’s important to explain the reasons behind dogfooding. Tell them how joining in helps the product succeed and leads to a better customer experience. Encourage participation by offering rewards, creating recognition programs, or including it in performance reviews.

Addressing Feedback and Making Iterative Changes

Receiving lots of feedback is good, but it can be too much if you do not handle it well. It’s very important to set up a way to gather, sort, and address feedback in an organized and timely way. Use project management tools, make specific channels for feedback, or have team members help with sorting and processing feedback.

Do not let feedback stagnate for a long time. It’s also important to be open with employees about which suggestions you are using, which ones you are thinking about, and which ones you will wait on.

• Categorize feedback: Sort feedback by type, like bugs, feature requests, or usability issues, or by product area for easier review.
• Prioritize feedback: Focus first on serious problems that affect core function or user experience.
• Iterate based on feedback: Make changes in steps, test them within the team, and gather more feedback before updating customers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, dogfooding is more than just a term. It is a smart way to spark new ideas, build trust, and focus on customer needs in product development. When you really use your own product, it helps you find where improvements can be made. This can raise the quality and strengthen your reputation both inside and outside the company. By facing difficulties with clear talks and constant changes, your organization can grow and adjust over time. Adding dogfooding to your way of working can help your team connect better with what customers want. If you want to improve your product development process, think about making dogfooding a main practice.

Frequently asked questions