# Staging Environment A staging environment means different things to different teams. ## Ideal Staging A place to test [[CICD]]-built artifacts prior to running the same artifacts in a [[production environment]]. Ideally this environment is identical to the [[production environment]] and deviates only in one meaningful way: the single artifact under test In practice, staging differs in meaningful ways from production due to: - cost (scale) - mistakes (configuration drift) - multiple changes staged at the same time (costs) ## Alternative Definitions of Staging - An [[integration test]] environment - A cross-section of the [[production environment]] if subscribed to [[There Is No Staging Version of The Internet]] - A shared [[development environment]] where different teams test out pre-[[production environment]] changes simultaneously The latter is the least useful take on a staging environment. It will always be unstable and require at least as much effort to maintain as production if production-level stability is required. See [[There Is No Staging Version of The Internet]]