The gap between development and production environments is a significant bottleneck that slows down deployments, increases bugs, and hampers developer productivity. This disconnect arises from the misalignment of local development environments with shared realities in production. Emerging solutions like Cloud Development Environments (CDEs), Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and Preview environments aim to bridge this gap by providing developers with an environment mirroring production as closely as possible, allowing for seamless software development environments that enhance velocity without compromising quality. The industry is embracing new paradigms and technologies to enable seamless alignment, but challenges like cost, adoption, and change management must be addressed thoughtfully. Despite obstacles, aligning environments greatly benefits productivity, quality, and velocity, and persistent innovation in processes, automation, and tooling will progressively bridge this gap.