Professional K2 blackpearl®

Chapter 6. Planning an Effective Development, Testing, and Staging Environment and Strategy

Gabriel Malherbe

Planning an effective approach to a K2 blackpearl solution from an environment perspective is the key to successful delivery. The nature of the solution, size of the audience, and your development approach play a role when selecting the required environments. Capturing non-functional requirements often dictate the project approach. This approach will in return help formulate a strategy that can be applied when setting up an effective environment.

Planning and deploying a successful K2 blackpearl project is not only about having a running server. Methodology, solution footprint, and technology dependency will dictate environment requirements.

When picking a strategy, consider some of the following factors:

• The project and development methodology: Are you involved in a large waterfall style development where specification and construction cycles are long and delivery positioned at the end of the project, or are you required to deliver short, continually integrated development cycles?

• The infrastructure footprint of the solution: Is your solution a standalone development with minimal dependencies on external infrastructure, or is the list of systems, data sources, and technologies your solution depends on as long as the list of requirements?

• Continual development and maintenance: After you have delivered the solution are there subsequent phases to the project or will continual support ...