Key Factors for Creating an Effective Test Environment for Testing a Product

Test environment is very essential for testing any product because a tester can easily play with the application whatever he /she want to test without afraid to post any content on test server. Customer and quality/testing team of the vendor both are profited by getting the separate or individual environment for testing the application/product.

There are some important key factors which we need to follow for building an effective test environment for testing.

Test environment management is the procedure through which test machines (clients, servers, or both) are managed and this can be explained by the below given diagram.

Test Manager is responsible to get the test environment on time before starting of testing in every release. He or She has to co-ordinates with different teams for updating the test environment in every release cycle before the execution started.

Let us understand some important key factors for building the test environment are as follows:

1. First you must understand the environment detail clearly in which customer is going to run the software or application. It is required to verify not only for the server but also for user's machine.
   Environment factors can be related to hardware, software, operating system required, database, web browsers, front end tools etc.
   
   Taking care of all available operating system's versions and browser's on the client's machines to run the application.
    
2. Prepare the test environment dedicated for testing purpose on a separate server and that should be free from development
3. It must be a replica of customer's environment as much as possible for testing the application. This is applicable for both Server and client machines.
4. Testing team should understand the Functional /Non-Functional/Business specifications of the customer for preparing different test scenarios for the testing of a particular application. Test Manager defines the scope of testing in every test plan at the time of a new release. Test Cases must have more coverage as per customer specifications.
5. Tester's needs to document each and every test performed for particular module during integration testing of product in every release.

This will help you to understand the basic key factors for building the effective test environment for testing.