Why Staging Systems Are a Lie
In software development, staging systems have long been seen as a crucial step in the deployment pipeline. The idea is simple: replicate your production environment as closely as possible to catch any issues before they hit your live users.
Sounds great.
But the harsh truth is: Staging systems are a lie.
Staging systems promise a level of “sameness” and reliability that, in practice, they rarely deliver. Let’s dive into why staging environments are more trouble than they’re worth and explore the best alternative.
The Illusion of Staging Environments
If You Want Production, Pay for Production
The fundamental problem with staging environments is that if you truly want to replicate your production environment, you need to match its scale, all connected systems (!) configuration, and data. This is not only challenging but also very expensive. Most companies can’t afford to maintain a secondary system that mirrors their production environment in every detail. And “can’t afford” does not only mean money, but also time spent by employees to maintain data, connect systems and fix issues.
As a result, staging environments end up being a watered-down version of production, lacking the complexity and scale needed to catch all potential issues.
A Crippled System is Far From Useful
A staging environment that doesn’t fully replicate production is, at best, a crippled system. It can catch some issues, but it will miss many others that only manifest under the full load and specific conditions of your live environment. This creates a false sense of security. Developers and QA teams may feel confident that their code is ready for production, only to find that it breaks under real-world conditions. Staging can lead to worse code and more bugs.
When Staging Can Be Useful
That said, staging environments aren’t entirely without merit. They can be useful for specific tasks, such as deploying new code and verifying database migrations on a fresh system. In my own experience, staging environments have saved me a few times by catching issues related to database schema changes that would have caused outages if they had reached production. However, these benefits are limited and don’t justify the overall cost and complexity of maintaining a full staging environment replicating the whole world.
The Real Solution: Feature Toggles and Live Systems
Embrace Feature Toggles
Feature toggles, also known as feature flags, offer a more practical and efficient solution. By using feature toggles, you can deploy new features to production in a controlled manner, enabling them only for specific users or under certain conditions. This allows you to test new functionality in the real-world environment without exposing all your users to potential issues.
Test in the Live System
Testing new features directly in the live system, under real-world conditions, provides a level of assurance that no staging environment can match. With feature toggles, you can gradually roll out new features, monitor their performance, and quickly disable them if any issues arise. This approach not only reduces the need for a separate staging environment but also accelerates the deployment process, allowing you to deliver new features to your users faster.
Conclusion
Staging systems are a noble idea in theory but fall short in practice. They promise to replicate production but often fail to deliver the same complexity and scale, leading to a false sense of security. While they can be useful for specific tasks like database migrations, the overall cost and effort of maintaining a staging environment are hard to justify.
Feature toggles provide a more practical and effective solution. By allowing you to test new features directly in the live system, feature toggles offer the assurance and reliability that staging environments promise but rarely deliver. It’s time to rethink our reliance on staging systems and embrace feature toggles as the future of deployment.
More
- Martin wrote a great post on Feature Toggles: https://martinfowler.com/articles/feature-toggles.html
- Wikipedia on Feature toggles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_toggle
