Testing environments that mirror production are critical to ensuring product stability when rolling out new innovations. Without these environments, even minor changes can unexpectedly disrupt user experience or functionality. When possible, proactive test coverage has helped us catch bugs that would have otherwise impacted the student experience, allowing us to adjust before full deployment. In cases where we haven’t been able to adequately test new features or bug fixes, we have been bitten by it.

Beyond bug-catching, robust testing environments are essential for stress testing—ensuring new features can handle real-world demand without a hitch. The benefits don’t stop at stability; effective testing can also reveal performance optimizations, cost savings, and even unexpected user needs. Investing time in testing infrastructure accelerates later phases of the product lifecycle by minimizing support calls, outages, and costly fixes.

How many pre-production environments does your organization utilize? Do you combine UAT and QA? Is it difficult to maintain production data in lower environments?