Staging environment not mirroring production causes deployment failures

Staging environment uses different broker, database, or configuration than production, causing issues that only appear post-deployment. Critical configuration like authentication, secrets, or broker URLs differ between environments.

Verify staging environment mirrors production infrastructure: same broker type (RabbitMQ/Redis), same authentication configuration, same worker count proportionally. Never point staging at production broker. Use separate broker and database for staging. Test with realistic load (1000+ tasks) in staging before production deployment. Pin specific image versions (e.g., getkanchi/kanchi:v1.2.3) rather than :latest.