Feature Branches are fine, provided you apply discipline and rigour - just like all of your DevOps/agile practises.
The key, like you highlighted is #smallbatches. Feature Branches over one or two days are fine. I’ve worked on teams where every time one pushes a new branch they create a new Pull Request. The convention then is to immediately glance over the other 3-5 PRs in the list. This “give and take” attitude ensures that devs are not left isolated, review happens async, and everyone is encouraged to use Feature Toggles/Flags to get their work into master as soon as they can.
Mainline development is critical in CI/CD but when I say that I don’t exclude Feature Branches. A team more than two pushing direct to master every day only works when everyone is very disciplined or experienced. In my experience, that’s a rare luxury.
As usual, I find the answer is always “it depends”. Please don’t write off Feature Branches. They are most certainly compatible and IMO, a core component, of an agile team and process.
Feature Branches are fine, provided you apply discipline and rigour - just like all of your DevOps/agile practises.
The key, like you highlighted is #smallbatches. Feature Branches over one or two days are fine. I’ve worked on teams where every time one pushes a new branch they create a new Pull Request. The convention then is to immediately glance over the other 3-5 PRs in the list. This “give and take” attitude ensures that devs are not left isolated, review happens async, and everyone is encouraged to use Feature Toggles/Flags to get their work into master as soon as they can.
Mainline development is critical in CI/CD but when I say that I don’t exclude Feature Branches. A team more than two pushing direct to master every day only works when everyone is very disciplined or experienced. In my experience, that’s a rare luxury.
As usual, I find the answer is always “it depends”. Please don’t write off Feature Branches. They are most certainly compatible and IMO, a core component, of an agile team and process.
More here leanpub.com/agileforteams/read#lea... and here leanpub.com/agileforteams/read#lea...