Entering the construction zone:
How to perform acceptance testing on a staging or development environment
While individual projects vary, there are generally three environments where the code for your website lives:
Development
The development environment, commonly referred to as dev, is the copy of your website where construction is taking place. As software developers create new code and modify existing code, the changes are first placed here for the developer to test and review. The code in the development environment is often untested or only lightly tested. As a result, this environment often has unfinished and broken features.
Staging
The staging environment is where much of the final quality assurance testing takes place. This is where we determine if the changes and features are ready for prime time.
Production
The production environment, commonly referred to as live, is the copy of your website that the users see. Before code is moved to production, it must be thoroughly tested so that your users don’t experience bugs or broken features.
There may be times when you need to perform acceptance testing on our work in the staging environment or even in the development environment. When you enter those environments, please set your expectations appropriately.
Before you step into the website construction site, we would like to give you some warnings and some do’s and don’ts that will keep you and your website safe and allow you to actively participate in improving your project.
How do I access the dev or staging environments?
If the need arises for you to review a dev or staging environment, your project manager will share a link with you. Like any other website, clicking the link will take you to the site in that environment.
The do’s and don’ts of the construction zone
Don’t share the URL
Unless given permission from your project manager, do not share the review URL with others.
Don’t make changes without permission
You may be given admin access to the dev environment. Unless you have been given permission by your project manager, do not make changes to the site. Any changes you make could result in unbudgeted work by Smooth Fusion to fix problems.
Expect the unexpected
Because dev and staging are not live sites, our team may not be coordinating their work with your review. As a result, you should expect the unexpected. New code could be deployed at any time, causing the site to become unresponsive or break. Before reporting that sort of issue, we recommend you wait a few minutes and try again.
Note for Sitefinity CMS Sites: If you are logging into the Sitefinity CMS backend, there may be limits to the number of users who can access the backend. It is possible that the activity of Smooth Fusion team members could result in you being logged out of the CMS backend.
Do be careful and ask questions
Just like you shouldn’t lean on a new wall in a building under construction, please be careful as you poke around in these environments. When in doubt, ask your project manager or solution architect. For example, if you log into an admin feature and you are prompted to kick another user out, please ask before potentially interrupting the work of our team.
Do take screenshots
If you find a problem with a feature that is known to be complete, take a screenshot and email it to your project manager.
Do write steps to reproduce
Reports of functionality issues should include steps to reproduce. Clear steps to reproduce problems drastically reduce the time required to fix them. For example:
- Go to the home page.
- Click "Contact Us"
- Complete the form and submit.
- Note the 'Invalid data' error on submission.
Do get excited about your project
Our mission is to create functional, usable, secure, and elegant software while striving to make the process painless for our customers. Part of how we make the process painless is through collaboration with our customers. So we hope that when you get a peek into the construction zone, it will be exciting.
Our goal is to deliver a project that will help you thrive. We love watching every project come together and ultimately launch. Thank you for your participation with us in this process.