Eating Your Own Dog Food (Dogfooding)

"Eating your own dog food" is an expression meaning that the creator(s) of a product / service also use that product / service as a way to test and gather feedback.  Whilst this can provide good, real-world insights as to the experience of using the product / service in question, others argue that this should not be the sole means of testing, as creators are inherently biased towards viewing their creations in a positive light, meaning that critical issues and poor user experiences (UX) could go unnoticed and / or unresolved.

The practice of using your own product internally before releasing it to customers, treating real internal usage as a form of quality testing. The term comes from the phrase "eating your own dog food." In a startup or product team context, this means having employees, founders, or a small internal group use the product in its current state to surface bugs, design flaws, and usability issues that controlled test environments miss. 

For example: a payment startup asking all staff to process their own expense claims through the new app before go-live; a communication tool team requiring that all internal messaging happens through the product itself.

Definition: Dogfooding is the practice of an organisation's own people using new code before or alongside customers, short for "eating your own dog food". Participants know they are using new code and often take part by invitation. Feedback may include telemetry, but is often given manually.

So what? Internal users find real-world problems early, in a group that is forgiving and easy to reach. As a testing in production methodology, it sits close to a beta, where external users opt in.

Examples: Releasing a new version internally first, as a stage before any external release. Staff using a new feature in their daily work and reporting problems through an internal channel.