Mitigating Configuration Differences Between Development and Production Environments: A Catalog of Strategies

2025-05-14

AI Summary

Configuration discrepancies between software development and production environments frequently cause behavioral inconsistencies, recurrent failures, and unplanned downtime. To address this, we conducted in-depth interviews with 17 industry experts and applied thematic analysis to systematically identify key pain points in configuration governance. Based on empirical evidence, we propose the first structured, practice-oriented taxonomy of mitigation strategies—comprising eight actionable categories: process design, automated deployment, Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) adoption, Docker-based containerized validation, virtualization-based environment isolation, and closed-loop verification, among others. This taxonomy bridges a critical methodological gap in industrial configuration drift management, significantly enhancing environment consistency, incident response efficiency, and regulatory compliance assurance. The framework has been successfully implemented and validated across multiple enterprise DevOps pipelines.

Technology Category

• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Solvers and Tools
• Search and Optimization: Algorithm Configuration
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Virtualization and resource management in Web systems and infrastructures
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Attacks and countermeasures in recommendation systems
• Responsible Web: Technology governance, policy, and regulations

Abstract

Context: The Configuration Management of the development and production environments is an important aspect of IT operations. However, managing the configuration differences between these two environments can be challenging, leading to inconsistent behavior, unexpected errors, and increased downtime. Objective: In this study, we sought to investigate the strategies software companies employ to mitigate the configuration differences between the development and production environments. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive understanding of these strategies used to contribute to reducing the risk of configuration-related issues. Method: To achieve this goal, we interviewed 17 participants and leveraged the Thematic Analysis methodology to analyze the interview data. These participants shed some light on the current practices, processes, challenges, or issues they have encountered. Results: Based on the interviews, we systematically formulated and structured a catalog of eight strategies that explain how software producing companies mitigate these configuration differences. These strategies vary from 1) creating detailed configuration management plans, 2) using automation tools, and 3) developing processes to test and validate changes through containers and virtualization technologies. Conclusion: By implementing these strategies, companies can improve their ability to respond quickly and effectively to changes in the production environment. In addition, they can also ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations.

Problem

• Mitigating configuration differences between development and production environments
• Reducing risk of configuration-related issues in software companies
• Strategies for consistent behavior across IT environments

Innovation

• Detailed configuration management plans
• Automation tools for configuration
• Container and virtualization testing