Development environment (software development process)

In hosted software (e.g., web site/application, database not shrinkwrap software) development, a development environment refers to a server tier designated to a specific stage in a release process.

Development, staging, and production is a common arrangement of tiers.

A more comprehensive list of tiers:

Environment/Tier Name	Description
Local	Developer's desktop/workstation
Virtual Machine	VM hosted on developers desktop or possibly development server
Development	Development server aka sandbox
Integration	CI build target, or for developer testing of side effects
Test/QA	For functional, performance testing, Quality Assurance etc.
UAT	User acceptance testing
Stage/Pre-production	Mirror of production environment
Production/Live	Serves end-users/clients

See also

• Application lifecycle management
• Release management
• Software deployment

External links

• Traditional Development/Integration/Staging/Production Practice for Software Development
• The Development, Staging, and Production Model
• Development Sandboxes: An Agile "Best" Practice