There are many testing tools you can use to drive effective software delivery.

However, what about Test Environment Management Tools?

Test environment management tools help to support the creation and maintenance of effective test environments. These tools provide a way to manage different aspects of the test environment, from reservation and scheduling to infrastructure configuration and deployment. By using these tools, organizations can improve the efficiency and quality of their testing process, as well as reduce the associated costs.

The following are some of the most frequent tools (or functions) you'd need in order to establish a Test Environment Management capability:

• Environment Knowledge Base (CMDB)
• Test Environment Booking System
• Environment (Infrastructure) Orchestration Tool
• Build & Deployment Tools / Continuous Integration Tools
• Infrastructure Configuration Tools
• Service Virtualization
• Environment Shakedown Tools
• Service Support Tools (Incident & Change)
• Environment Health Dashboards

Ultimately many different tools are likely to be used in support of your DevTest environments (e.g. Jenkins for app builds, Puppet for infrastructure configuration, CA Lisa for service virtualization, Remedy for ITSM, Informatica TDM for ETL).

The biggest challenge however is that these solutions are often disjoint and information not integrated, so there is often great value in larger organisations leveraging end to end Test Environment Governance and Orchestration platforms (for example Enov8, Temscorp or Plutora) opposed to struggling forward with traditional & archaic methods like email & spreadsheets.

By investing in a Test Environment tool, you will have a Single view of all test environments (& data) and a place to collaborate on and view key environment information & behavior including identifying environment configurations, environment bookings, allocation, environment activities & schedules, service support needs, team contention and health.

And ultimately uplift visibility, quality, availability, and utilization of your environments by reducing disruption, controlling costs, standardizing operations and avoiding IT project delays.

If you're curious about the Test Environment Management Tools we mentioned, take a look at Test Environment Management Tools Compared. This article compares different tools in terms of their features and capabilities and provides you with a TEM tool scorecard.