Ship Show Ask - A modern branching strategy at Lean Agile Scotland 2024

Pull requests have become a bottleneck. Engineers waste hours waiting for code reviews or long builds, switching between branches or reworking changes.

We are wasting time with no measurable improvement in quality.

Ship/Show/Ask is a new software branching strategy that combines the features of Pull Requests with the ability to keep shipping changes.

In this session, we'll look at branching in a more inclusive, dynamic way to unlock impactful code reviews without creating bottlenecks.

Participant takeaways:

An understanding of the pros and cons of pull requests as a mechanism for integration
A new, modern branching strategy that takes a more dynamic view on branching
Practical next steps for moving from "mostly ship" or "mostly ask" approaches

1. Rouan Wilsenach
Ship/Show/Ask
A modern branching strategy
wartypig.co.uk
@rouanw [email protected]

2. Chapter one
Where are we today?
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3. How can we work effectively on
one codebase at the same time?
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4. Spoiler:
this talk is really about trust
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5. There was a time in the short (but getting longer)
history of software when the answer was:
“see you later!”
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6. wartypig.co.uk

7. Agile & XP came along
talk more, work together and
put our changes together all the time
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8. The rise of the Pull Request
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10. We’ve gotten ourselves into a
bit of a mess…
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11. In 40% of teams:
> 14 hours for a PR to be picked up for review
> 18 hours for a PR to go from opened to merged
<1 merge per dev per week
https://linearb.io/resources/engineering-benchmarks
Data from 3.6M PRs across 2000 teams

14. How did this happen?
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15. Fear about security and
compliance
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16. Teams scale fast and people’s
context is low
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17. Remember when I said this is
about trust?
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18. What does this cost?
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19. Waiting time
Context switching
PR Bloat
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20. Review fatigue
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22. We’ve all reshaped our workflows
for reviews that mean nothing
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23. Back to TBD?
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24. The PR advantage no one talks about:
inclusivity through enabling asynchronous
workflows
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25. More flexible way of working.
Remote work.
Part time work.
Time zones.
People with family commitments.
People with accessibility requirements.
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26. The tech industry desperately
needs diversity
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27. Chapter two
A trust-based branching model
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28. Introducing
Ship/Show/Ask
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29. The person contributing each change makes a
call about how the change should be treated
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30. wartypig.co.uk
Ship

31. wartypig.co.uk
Ship

32. wartypig.co.uk
Show

33. wartypig.co.uk
Show

34. wartypig.co.uk
Ask

35. wartypig.co.uk
Ask

36. The rules:
Approval should not be a merge requirement
People get to merge their own Pull Requests
We use TBD techniques
Our branches should not live long
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37. Pull requests cannot replace
conversation
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38. Chapter three
What about you?
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39. You’re already using my
branching strategy!
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40. If you mostly ship…
Start showing to increase visibility
Have conversations next to the code
Include people
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41. If you mostly ask…
Start showing to release some pressure
Learn some TBD techniques
Work on building trust
Incentivise safe changes
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42. Balance
Trust
Familiarity
Experience
Regulation
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43. Rouan Wilsenach
Ship/Show/Ask
A modern branching strategy
wartypig.co.uk
@rouanw [email protected]
https://martinfowler.com/articles/ship-show-ask.html