Branch Promotion vs Modern Software Delivery
Explains why modern software teams avoid branch promotion, using continuous integration, feature flags, and production-like testing to streamline …
TL;DR; Using separate branches for each environment increases complexity and slows feedback, making it harder to deliver value quickly. Teams should use branches to manage work in progress and rely on feature flags and progressive rollouts to control what users see. Review your current branching approach and consider simplifying it to speed up delivery and reduce risk.
I see it all the time: teams structuring their branching strategy to mirror their environments. A dev branch for Dev, a staging branch for Staging, a release branch for Production.
It feels logical. It’s also a huge mistake.
Branching by environment creates silos, increases complexity, and slows feedback loops to a crawl. Every additional branch is another place where drift can happen, another bottleneck before value reaches customers. Instead of using branches as proxies for environments, teams should deploy the same code everywhere and control exposure dynamically—with feature flags, progressive rollouts, and real-time observability.
Branches should reflect work in progress, not artificial environments. If you’re still managing code like it’s 2005, it’s time to rethink how you deploy.
How does your team structure branches today? Is it helping or slowing you down?
Each classification [Concepts, Categories, & Tags] was assigned using AI-powered semantic analysis and scored across relevance, depth, and alignment. Final decisions? Still human. Always traceable. Hover to see how it applies.
If you've made it this far, it's worth connecting with our principal consultant and coach, Martin Hinshelwood, for a 30-minute 'ask me anything' call.
We partner with businesses across diverse industries, including finance, insurance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, technology, engineering, transportation, hospitality, entertainment, legal, government, and military sectors.
Brandes Investment Partners L.P.
Lockheed Martin
Slicedbread
Healthgrades
Schlumberger
Sage
DFDS
Higher Education Statistics Agency
Lean SA
Xceptor - Process and Data Automation
MacDonald Humfrey (Automation) Ltd.
Slaughter and May
Teleplan
Boxit Document Solutions
Jack Links
Graham & Brown
Bistech
Freadom
Department of Work and Pensions (UK)
Nottingham County Council
Washington Department of Enterprise Services
Royal Air Force
Washington Department of Transport
Ghana Police Service
Capita Secure Information Solutions Ltd
Boeing
Higher Education Statistics Agency
Milliman
Epic Games
Teleplan