Customizing SharePoint

One of the most popular personalization systems SharePoint have is how to manage the process of implementing the code. Organizations usually have guidelines for configuration management that help them regulate how code makes it into the product if that is the internally developed code or patches are used for the operating system and products being leveraged.
The problem is that SharePoint does not fit a model very clean. Because much of SharePoint is the configuration and data driven, code that works on the development or test environment may not work in Prod because things are configured differently or there are different data to operate.
So how do handle a situation where you have the configuration data needed to comply with the code to create a complete solution? In this article I will address this problem, a generic approach, and discuss some of the edges of strategy will have to educate everyone.
In order to facilitate a discussion, let's assume that we have three formal environments:
Development - a systems integration environment where developers have approach to servers and administrative controls. Some systems call this environment the "Wild West" because it is only slightly in configuration management. This actually a systems integration environment where all code is special to live together with test data before going further.
Quality Assurance (QA) / Test - The Quality Assurance (QA) or test environment is where the development code and content or a subset of the contents of the production comes together. This is where final signoffs received before going into production. There may be multiple quality control environments in an organization, but for our purposes can be considered once and we all live in the same space of configuration management. This environment is generally well controlled and follows a process of change management - but usually with less strong commitment to the production environment.
Production The production environment is strictly controlled in the tightest restrictions on access and where the availability, reliability and scalability are of paramount importance. This is the final resting place for the code and at least in some environments is the origin of any content.
It is certainly possible environments or have a more involved, however, this simple example will make it better to talk about the concepts. The assumption that is not listed as a good environment in the former is that developers will have their own local environment that have not been formalized. Its initial development work will take place on their local machines or dedicated development machines - not the development environment.