Isn't the normal process, roughly, to:

1) Use unit tests to move quickly through to implementing The Feature 2) When The Feature is complete, run in a local environment to confirm it works 3) When that works, move The Feature to a development environment that more closely mimics Prod 4) Deploy to Prod

Each one of those steps takes an order of magnitude longer than the previous one, so should be done an order of magnitude less often. However if you are finding inconsistencies between steps, then alter local/dev to ensure more consistent testing. (i.e. if it works on Dev, it should just work on Prod, however there are always little issues).