Best practices on a preview and staging evironment

MLee7404

Hello.

I wanted to get insight and best practices on designing a preview/staging environment for my new company.

Previously at my old company, we had a:

dev environment for applications(sandbox)
QA environment for final application code changes
Preview environment where teamsite changes could be made and tested in context.
A staging environment that was just a cue for production
A final production environment.

Most of all changes were reviewed and workflows were approved in the preview environment, then submitted in staging in cue for production.

In my new company,

They had previously reviewed changes in what was a pre-prod staging environment before it went to production. They previously did not have
a true preview environment.

I have provided suggestion to my previous architecture to develop out a true preview environment that mirrors production, but they are concerned that if things are reviewed in a preview environment, the review of changes will be unstable because of so many other things being worked on in the preview environment.

They'd prefer to have things reviewed in the final pre-pro staging before it goes to production.

This however throws workflow reviews and rejection out of an efficient loop if we do a final review in staging as well as do changes in preview.

I wanted to know of other people's experiences w/a preview environment, and their use of the staging environment and about review/approvals.

Thanks.

p.s. Please also share what terminology you use to refer to the "preview" and "staging" environment. Those are open to change as well.

gzevin

Hello. I wanted to get insight and best practices on designing a preview/staging environment for my new company. Previously at my old company, we had a: dev environment for applications(sandbox) QA environment for final application code changes Preview environment where teamsite changes could be made and tested in context. A staging environment that was just a cue for production A final production environment. Most of all changes were reviewed and workflows were approved in the preview environment, then submitted in staging in cue for production. In my new company, They had previously reviewed changes in what was a pre-prod staging environment before it went to production. They previously did not have a true preview environment. I have provided suggestion to my previous architecture to develop out a true preview environment that mirrors production, but they are concerned that if things are reviewed in a preview environment, the review of changes will be unstable because of so many other things being worked on in the preview environment. They'd prefer to have things reviewed in the final pre-pro staging before it goes to production. This however throws workflow reviews and rejection out of an efficient loop if we do a final review in staging as well as do changes in preview. I wanted to know of other people's experiences w/a preview environment, and their use of the staging environment and about review/approvals. Thanks. p.s. Please also share what terminology you use to refer to the "preview" and "staging" environment. Those are open to change as well.

whay all of this cannot be done in one TeamSite box? including applications? IWOV now offers pretty good packaged solutions on applications and content provisioning.