Meaning
The live, real-time environment where software applications are made accessible to actual end users.
Three examples from work
Safety rules
LeadNever test unverified database queries directly on production.
DevI always test locally and on staging first.
Incident
DevOpsWe have an active production incident affecting user logins.
On-call LeadI am opening an incident channel and rolling back the latest release.
Feature release
POWhen does the billing update reach production?
DevOpsIt will deploy to production tonight after automated regression tests complete.
Commonly abbreviated in speech as 'prod' (e.g. 'pushed to prod', 'down in prod'). Production requires strict change management and monitoring.