Before starting testing on the application you should have
quality plan, go through the application thoroughly before
taking next step. Think from the user's point of view. Go
through all the documention related to the application.

Hi,

The test envirnoment to be setup should be same as what the 
Client is going to have while using the Application in 
development. So while requirement analysis the envirnoment 
details will the gathered and which will be mentioned in 
the Test Plan.

So we as a test engineer we need to go thorugh the Test 
envirnoment setup information and setup the our local test 
envirnoment similar to that. Make sure if we are testing a 
client/ server application or a 3- tier application then we 
should setup the envirnoment in same way.

But if in your company virtual enivirnoments are used for 
testing then u need to raise request for Envirnoment 
creation with details like OS version, Softwares needed, 
Space needed, etc.

Thanks
Smaranika