3 Typical Test Environments in System Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

This article describes the most common software application environments considered during the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC).  The three (3) most common phases or environments include Development Environment, Testing Environment, and Operational Environment.

The System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) describes the activities and tools required to perform a particular process within each environment. The SDLC environments are defined as controlled points where developers can carry out activities related to development, testing, installation, configuration, and deployment. These three (3) environments are associated with the different phases considered during the SDLC.

The validation strategy should consider and define the scenario required for each environment. Particular tests and challenges may take place in each environment during the SDLC:

1. Development Environment

It is where prototyping or programming takes place before moving to the test environment.  It is a dedicated workplace (e.g. servers, client stations, database, etc) and tools for developing, and debugging an application or program. In this workplace is where the developer tests code and checks whether the application runs successfully with that code. Once the application has been tested and the developer feels that the code is working fine, the application then moves to the testing environment also called an Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

An integrated development environment (IDE) provides comprehensive applications to computer programmers for software development. An IDE commonly contains a source code editor, build automation tools, and a debugger.

2. Testing Environment

The test environment is where formal verification and validation are performed before moving to the operational environment fully implemented for production use.  This workplace environment and its configuration must be similar to the operational (production) environment.  It is a dedicated workplace (e.g. servers, client stations, database, etc) and tools to make formal testing on applications or programs.  Commonly, called the validation environment since testing is done also in the development and operational environments.  

The application is verified and validated in the testing environment to check for reliability and to make sure it does not fail.  A fully documented validation is performed in the testing environment as the final step before the application could be deployed in an operational environment. The validation needs to be approved in order to deploy it in the operational environment.

3. Operational Environment

Once the application is verified and validated, the application then becomes a part of the operational environment. It is known as the production environment because it is where the application go-lives.

Also called the production environment, it is the workplace where the system is in its target environment or final location for commercial or deployment use.

The operational environment is a workplace where software and other products are actually challenged once they are placed into operation for their intended uses by end-users.

An operational environment contains the real-time setting where programs are run and hardware setups are installed and relied on for organization or commercial daily operations.