Any developer can tell you that if you're not careful, maintaining development and testing environments can quickly become a huge pain point.  Small changes may be made/new content created in production, but these changes are not synced back to lower environments, and as a result, bugs are missed when developing and testing major changes.  It is important to streamline your deployment cycle to avoid these cases.  Here are a few principles to keep in mind when doing so:

1. Automate wherever possible: production will always have more data than the lower environments, but dev and test need to have enough content such that new features are sufficiently validated.  Use the tools of your platform to automate copying particular subsets of content and even configurations from production down to dev/test.  For configurations, this adds confidence that deploys up to production will not inadvertently overwrite features.
2. Define types of changes: ideally, every new feature is thoroughly tested before going to production, but there are only so many hours in the day.  If something trivial is changing, like the label for a field, then it may make more sense to perform the change directly in production.  Ensure that the difference between minor and major changes is clearly defined and that the entire project team understands the proper procedure.
3. Closely track all changes: use a ticketing system with statuses indicating where each feature is in the deployment process.  Refer to these tickets in your version control.  Add lots of comments so there's a clear trail to follow for any change.

This only begins to scratch the surface, but proper maintenance of development and testing environments is crucial to the success of any project!

About TEAM IM

TEAM IM is an experienced solution company that advises, develops, implements, supports, and manages enterprise grade process, information and content management systems. For more than twenty years, TEAM IM has acted as a trusted advisor to our clients through our offices in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the United States. Our mission is to assist our client to get the most out of their investments in technology. Whether our clients are large government agencies or corporations, construction firms, accounting firms, heavy industry, or smaller organizations, we strive to deliver demonstrable business benefits and generate real return on investment for our clients.

Our products and services offer solutions to transform your business by automating and modernizing your operations. We work hand-in-hand with our clients to understand their goals and create and execute multi-year, continuous improvement plans. Our mission is to support and manage every solution we deliver, so we take care to design long term, future proof, maintainable solutions. We work with best-in-class technology partners that we have carefully selected to ensure we can execute our plan and achieve our clients continuous improvement goals.

Our products and solutions encompass Advisory Services, Implementation Services and Managed Support Services. We specialize in Business Process Automation and Optimization, Content Platforms and Content Services and we are also a leader in Mobile App/Field Services software development and Digital Workplaces. We have industry-specific solutions for the Construction and Accounting Services sectors, and cross-industry solutions for Accounts Payable, Contract Management, App Modernization, Field Services and File Sharing.

At TEAM IM we are passionate about delivering outstanding outcomes for you, our clients.