Empiricism

Among DORA’s more controversial findings is that trunk based development is superior to feature branching. Teams achieve higher levels of software delivery and operational performance (delivery speed, stability, and availability) if they follow these practices: Have three or fewer active branches in the application’s code repository. Merge branches to trunk at least once a day. Don’t have code freezes and don’t have integration phases. Since we know not to be Cremoninis, we won’t be distracted by whether trunk-based development meets the HN trendiness standard, and we’ll be skeptical of anectdotal appeals to experience ...

Differences of opinion about how we ought to write software have an air of the philosophical about them. Some prefer TDD and microservices, others may prefer monoliths and think that most testing is a waste of time. Or engineers may prefer to use continuous development methodologies, while businesses prefer a waterfall approach with decorative scrum ceremonies. Are we stuck with opinions? Must we be subjected to the obligatory “well, in my experience …”? Are we simply expressing our personal feelings, or is there some truth to be had? ...