Best Branching Strategies for Dev Teams
Explains why environment-based branching slows development, and recommends using feature flags and progressive rollouts for simpler, faster, and safer …
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.
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.
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.
Alignment Healthcare
MacDonald Humfrey (Automation) Ltd.
CR2
New Signature
Slicedbread
Graham & Brown
Ericson
Healthgrades
Slaughter and May
ProgramUtvikling
SuperControl
Illumina
Boeing
YearUp.org
Lockheed Martin
Flowmaster (a Mentor Graphics Company)
Deliotte
Cognizant Microsoft Business Group (MBG)
Washington Department of Transport
Ghana Police Service
Department of Work and Pensions (UK)
New Hampshire Supreme Court
Washington Department of Enterprise Services
Royal Air Force
ProgramUtvikling
Ericson
DFDS
Hubtel Ghana
Capita Secure Information Solutions Ltd
Genus Breeding Ltd