Software Environments: Development, Staging and Production

Types of Environments: What's The Right Setup for Your Product?

Abstract violet and blue geometric illustration

Types of Environments: What's The Right Setup for Your Product?

Why do we need different environments? Why do some products have 5+ environments and others have just 3 of them? What is the right setup for your product?

The purpose of creating multiple environments, types and management

The most popular setup for development environments is the following; development, testing, staging, production. Some products only have the 2 of them - development and production, others include pre-production, demo, e2e tests, etc.

Let's see the purpose of each environment, and the specifications for each.

Production Environment

Demo Environment

Pre-Production Environment

Integration

Sandbox

Stage

e2e Test

Test/QA

Development

What is the right setup for your product?

The "right" number of environments in software development depends on the complexity of the project, the size of the team, the nature of the application, regulatory requirements, and the risk tolerance of the organization.

For smaller projects or teams with limited resources

Teams that have limited resources and their product isn't complex or doesn't require high reliability can create the basic setup of environments;

How does your product's setup look like?

Types of Environments: What's The Right Setup for Your Product?

Why do we need different environments? Why do some products have 5+ environments and others have just 3 of them? What is the right setup for your product?

The purpose of creating multiple environments, types and management

Let's see the purpose of each environment, and the specifications for each.

Production Environment

Demo Environment

Pre-Production Environment

Integration

Sandbox

Stage

e2e Test

Test/QA

Development

What is the right setup for your product?

For smaller projects or teams with limited resources

Teams that have limited resources and their product isn't complex or doesn't require high reliability can create the basic setup of environments;

Projects that require high reliability and involve complex deployments

For projects that require a higher level of reliability and where it's crucial to minimize the risk of errors in the production environment I suggest adding a staging environment so the setup looks like this;

Large, complex or regulated projects

The last setup is suited for large-scale, complex, or highly regulated projects where multiple types of testing are required to ensure the software’s reliability, performance, and security. It may look like this.

How does your product's setup look like?

Key takeaways

Choose environments based on the product’s complexity, reliability requirements, team capacity, and risk.
Keep production isolated and use staging or pre-production when release validation warrants it.
Prefer synthetic or properly anonymized test data, and apply appropriate access and security controls in every environment.

FAQ

How many environments does a product need?

There is no fixed number. Start with the environments needed to develop and operate safely, then add testing or staging environments as complexity and risk require.

What is the difference between staging and production?

Production serves real users and workloads. Staging is used to validate a release before it reaches production and should resemble the relevant production configuration.

Should test environments use production data?

Prefer synthetic or properly anonymized data. Use production data only when there is a valid need and appropriate authorization, access controls, and safeguards.

Can smaller teams start with fewer environments?

Yes. A small team can start simply and add separate testing or staging environments as the product and operational risks grow.

Software Environments: Development, Staging and Production | Das Meta