Hi,
For clarification, a "Production Environment" is
not a "Test Environment". A "Test Environment" exists to prepare for ultimate delivery to a Production Environment.
In short, there are multiple different types of Environments that all have different purposes. Here is a list of some of them...
- Research (RES) Environments
- Federated developer Work Space (WS) Environments (often includes federated Unit Testing and Module Testing Environments)
- Centralized or Common Build Environments (often Includes Centralized/Common Unit Testing and Module Testing Environments)
- Integration (INTEG) or Systems Integration Testing (SIT) Environments
- User Acceptance Testing (UAT) Environments
- Performance (PERF) Performance Testing Environments
- Production (PROD) Environments
- Disaster Recovery (DR) Environments
They all are tied to "Delivery" through what is known as a "Systems Development Life Cycle" or an "SDLC".
You can read more about Environments in the "
Information Technology (IT) Environment Framework" and the "
Information Technology (IT) Deployment Framework" in order to get a better idea of the many different types of environments and how they all tie together.
I hope this helps!