In the world of software development, every decision you make is executed in service of achieving the best possible outcome. From the team you put together to the way they work together to the timeline you set, all of it is intended to help achieve the best result at the right possible time. In recent years, many development teams have turned to ephemeral environments as yet another tool to use to accomplish precisely that.
Ephemeral environments are essential in this context because they offer the types of insights you might not get anywhere else. They're a perfect way to get feedback at critical points of the development process, and they can be of significant assistance in terms of validation for the entire development project. These qualities help you better navigate the ultimate path to development success, mitigating as much risk as possible.
Why Insight Matters
At their core, ephemeral environments are temporary, encapsulated application environments that are great for everything from collaborating asynchronously across teams to running tests, previewing new features, and more - all prior to any merging taking place.
Regardless of the type of software development project you're talking about, one major challenge that teams often face is a constant demand for new features. Not only do you have to work to improve what already exists constantly. One must also continue to innovate with regard to what might be possible, given the platform you're building.
How Saving Time Also Saves Money
Ephemeral environments relieve a bit of this pressure by saving time for both team members and their leaders in various ways. By using a temporary staging environment, those in charge of maintaining or modifying existing features can quickly preview them without running afoul of anything else that another team member may be doing.
This can help give everyone involved better insight into the direction the app is headed in, making sure their new features fit in with the larger vision that has been agreed upon, all in a way that also helps to avoid needing to deconflict a shared staging environment that is naturally in very high demand.
In Software Development, Consistency is King
The same concept is also true in a general sense. Development teams can create identical ephemeral environments that are to be used exclusively for the purposes of testing, for example. Each one can operate based on a consistent set of parameters, ensuring that every test is executed with the same properties. This helps dramatically reduce the chances that any errors are a result of environment-related problems.
Tests can be run at the same time, issues can be located and fixed quickly, and continuous integration and delivery can be practiced. With ephemeral environments, team members are simply gaining better insight far faster than ever, empowering virtually all parts of the process from the beginning. In most scenarios, this helps to significantly improve time-to-market without harming the overall quality of the software being developed in any way.
The Power of Feedback
Especially when it comes to complex software development projects, collaboration is one of the most valuable resources that teams have. If you're testing a new feature set, there's a distinct possibility that you may be "too close to it" after a certain point and are, therefore, unable to see things objectively. You know exactly what you were trying to do, but were you successful? Will anyone else be able to glean the same thing? These are the types of issues that get complicated after a period of time has gone by.
That's where ephemeral environments become enormously valuable. Individual software developers can create these on-demand environments for their colleagues to help with testing, to solicit feedback, and more. This totally eliminates not only any environment-related conflicts that may have held the process back in the past but any compatibility issues as well.
Enabling Superior Communication, One Process at a Time
This much-needed level of consistency allows for better collaboration during a time when it is desperately needed. You don't have to wait weeks or even days for someone's opinion so that you can incorporate additional optimizations before merging. It helps to empower communication (and thus feedback) and improves the overall productivity of both the individual and the team.
The faster you get feedback, the faster you can implement those changes and walk away with a higher-quality product.
Think about it like this. As a software developer, early and constant feedback is a necessary element for accomplishing your own set of goals and keeping up with quality demands. Ephemeral environments are an easy way to facilitate that feedback by eliminating a lot of the obstacles that used to exist. The more efficiently you can accomplish your goal, the more you'll be able to contribute to the larger whole that is the project meaningfully.
Everyone wins, from the individual developers to the team leaders to key stakeholders, users, and beyond, exactly how it should be.
Development Teams: Coming Together, Working as One
Overall, while it's certainly true that software development teams existed for years without ephemeral environments, it's also easy to see why they've become such a popular choice over the last few years in particular. They allow teams of all types and sizes to make better and more informed decisions. They can use opportunities to optimize before merging, achieving better quality results far faster than ever.
When effectively incorporated, they can help everyone involved better navigate the development process and significantly increase the chances of achieving the desired outcome - which in and of itself is the most important benefit of all.
