Definition
A place where tests may be run outside the development and live environments.
Comment
Testing performed at an intermediate location between the development environment and a live site with live users, provides many of the benefits of testing in development and user testing with few disadvantages (except for the extra cost and time spent establishing a test centre).


On many programmes and large projects, testing will take up a significant portion of the budget. But it will receive less management attention than an activity of this size warrants.