What does testing in production mean, and how would you do it safely?

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RED SAG · Accepted Answer

Testing in production means checking the real system with real infrastructure, data volumes and integrations, which staging can never fully match. It adds to pre-release testing; it does not replace it. One part is synthetic monitoring: automated scripts, often the same Playwright journeys, run every few minutes in production using dedicated test accounts, for example logging in and searching, and alert if they fail. Another part is safe release practices: feature flags so a feature can be turned on for internal users first, canary releases to a small percentage of traffic, and automatic rollback if error rates or latency rise. Test data must be clearly marked and isolated, so test orders are never shipped or counted in revenue. Strong observability, with logs, metrics and traces, makes problems visible quickly. Destructive tests, like heavy load, need careful planning and approval.

What does testing in production mean, and how would you do it safely?

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