Talk “Agile Workflows for Version Control”

Speaker: Lasse Koskela

Track: Testing
Audince Level: Practitioners

With Agile methods making their way into the mainstream and distributed version control systems (DVCS) like Git becoming increasingly popular, we are resurfacing some questions that were put to rest years ago. Suddenly, with the increased power and flexibility of DVCS we have a number of seemingly viable alternatives for an Agile team to integrate their work within and between teams. This presentation will discuss the relative benefits of a number of parallel development strategies such as private branches, trunk development and feature branches as well as how do these approaches fit in with the related practice of continuous integration.

We’ll begin with an overlook of common workflows for teams using a distributed version control system and seek out the main variations. Feature branches are one popular practice with Git, for example, but how does it fit into an agile workflow? We’ll continue our exploration by asking, first of all, what kind of things are of concern when talking about agile methods and version control? With some answers in mind, we’ll proceed with a critical eye on the different workflows and how they support agility. Finally, we’ll present some food for thought; something that you might want to consider when weighing between alternative workflows and trying to decide which way to go.