In our case, "testing" as an environment has the goal to be a fully integrated setup of the entire service landscape. Each team is responsible for the uptime of their service, just like in production.
The teams are running automated end-to-end tests against this environment. On top, pre-sales uses it to build demo and sample environments, sales shows demos on it, solution engineers use it to test/try out the important parts of projects.
That generates a good production-like experience for the team: You have customers using the system, and possibly screaming if you break it. And it has been pretty successful at catching problems missed or integration failures.
Comments
In our case, "testing" as an environment has the goal to be a fully integrated setup of the entire service landscape. Each team is responsible for the uptime of their service, just like in production.
The teams are running automated end-to-end tests against this environment. On top, pre-sales uses it to build demo and sample environments, sales shows demos on it, solution engineers use it to test/try out the important parts of projects.
That generates a good production-like experience for the team: You have customers using the system, and possibly screaming if you break it. And it has been pretty successful at catching problems missed or integration failures.