a·gen·tic a·gil·i·ty

The Hidden Costs of Supporting Multiple Versions in Production

TL;DR; Supporting multiple versions in production drains engineering resources through increased context-switching, merge conflicts, and bug risks. Back-porting fixes and maintaining separate branches for each customer make things worse, leading to instability and technical debt. To avoid these problems, teams should simplify and standardise their branching strategy.

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Supporting multiple versions in production is a hidden tax on engineering teams.

Every version adds:

Reverse integration—back-porting fixes to older versions—is even worse. It creates instability, increases the risk of unintended regressions, and wastes engineering time.

And then there’s branch by customer—the absolute worst-case scenario. Maintaining separate branches for each client is a scaling disaster, guaranteeing technical debt and a painful development experience.

If a team is struggling to keep track of where changes are applied, it’s already a sign that the branching strategy is broken. Standardise, simplify, and move forward—not backward.

Also published on: LinkedIn
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