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.