Environment
A defined set of infrastructure configuration data and services where software runs for a particular purpose.
Plain English
The surrounding setup in which an application is built tested or operated.
In context
Environments separate concerns such as development testing and production but meaningful parity requires managing differences explicitly.
Example
“The issue only occurs in the staging environment with production-like data volume.”
When you'll hear this
- development
- testing
- deployment
Common misunderstanding
An environment is more than a server and two environments with the same code can still behave differently.
Also known as
runtime environmentapplication environment
Commonly used by
Related terms
Updated: 2026-08-27
