Software Environments are physical or logical configurations fallen around different development phases. From analysis to maintenance an application goes through diverse Software Environments.
See this chart,
Phase
Environment
Purpose
Analysis
Planning Environment
Define requirements, feasibility studies, and initial design.
Development
Development Environment
Code writing, unit testing, and debugging.
Testing
Testing Environment
Functional, integration, and system testing.
Staging
Staging Environment
Pre-production testing, performance, and security validation.
