Development Workflow
How code moves from branch to Alpha, Beta, and Production — with visual flowcharts.
Every change follows the same path: write code → review → test in three environments → release to users. This page explains that path for both engineers and stakeholders.
The big picture
Think of our three environments as three safety checkpoints before code reaches customers:
| Environment | Plain English | Who uses it |
|---|---|---|
| Alpha | "Try my change" | Developer + reviewer on a pull request |
| Beta | "Team testing" | QA, product, and engineering on merged code |
| Prod | "Live for customers" | End users |
How a feature ships (step by step)
Branch ↔ environment mapping
| Git action | Environment affected | Automatic? |
|---|---|---|
| Push to feature branch + open PR | Alpha (preview URL) | Yes |
Merge PR to main | Beta | Yes |
| Tag release / manual promote | Prod | Manual approval required |
Roles at each stage
| Stage | Developer | Reviewer | QA / Product | SRE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alpha | Builds & tests preview | Reviews code + preview | Optional early look | — |
| Beta | Monitors CI | — | Runs test plan | Watches metrics |
| Prod | On-call if needed | — | Validates key flows | Approves deploy |
Related guides
- Environments — URLs, access, and configuration per environment
- Branching & Pull Requests — day-to-day developer workflow
- Release Process — production promotion and rollback