Engineering
Playbook: Are development conflicts undermining your team’s progress?
Sep 12, 2024
Is this a problem your team encounters?
Development conflicts don’t just slow you down—they disrupt your entire process. These avoidable obstacles often arise from a lack of structured version control and ineffective management of parallel workstreams. Without a disciplined approach, your team is left battling unnecessary setbacks, missing deadlines, and wasting time on problems that should have been prevented.
The truth is, teams that don’t address this issue head-on will continue to struggle. But by adopting a rigorous version control strategy and proactively managing development streams, you can resolve conflicts before they cripple your progress.
Your goals are our goals
We know the high cost of development conflicts and how they erode team efficiency and morale. With our experience helping teams overcome similar challenges, we’ve seen firsthand how a strong version control system and strategic management of development streams create a clear path to success.
Key benefits of solving this:
- Accelerated development cycles with fewer disruptions
- Seamless team collaboration and heightened morale
- Efficient handling of features and fixes, boosting productivity
Key approaches to tackle this challenge
Best Practice #1: Enforce a disciplined version control system like Gitflow or trunk-based development
Success in software development hinges on a disciplined version control strategy. Gitflow and trunk-based development offer two proven pathways. Gitflow relies on clear, long-lived branches to maintain order across complex projects, while trunk-based development demands frequent integration into a single main branch, minimizing conflicts and ensuring stability.
Adopt the method that best suits your team’s needs, but remember: without a strict system in place, you’ll continue to face unnecessary conflicts that drain time and resources.
Best Practice #2: Strategically manage multiple development streams
Managing multiple development streams effectively means more than just branching and merging—it requires a proactive approach to keep everything on track. Setting clear guidelines for branch use, performing frequent merges into the mainline, and utilizing feature toggles allow teams to work in parallel without sacrificing quality or speed.
Proactive stream management is not optional if you’re serious about reducing conflicts. Without it, your development process will remain stuck in reactive mode.
What does success look like?
Success comes when conflicts no longer dictate your team’s workflow. A disciplined version control system and the strategic management of development streams bring order to chaos, allowing your team to focus on creating value rather than untangling code.
By implementing these practices, your team will deliver faster, collaborate more efficiently, and maintain momentum. The result? A streamlined development process that eliminates conflict and drives success.
