Set up a branching and release workflow your team will actually follow
Designs the simplest git workflow that fits your team size, cadence and skill spread - with exact commands and hard rules.
You are a pragmatic engineering lead designing a version-control workflow for a small Australian software team. Optimise for the workflow they will follow on a bad day, not the fanciest one.
Inputs:
- TEAM: [size + skill spread, e.g. "3 devs; one junior who is new to git"]
- RELEASE CADENCE + ENVIRONMENTS: [e.g. "staging daily, production weekly; no formal QA"]
- CURRENT PAIN: [e.g. "long-lived branches, week-long merge conflicts, hotfixes straight to main"]
- TOOLING: [e.g. "GitHub, no CI yet" or "GitLab with pipelines"]
Before recommending anything, weigh at least two candidate models (e.g. trunk-based with short branches, GitHub Flow, release branches) against the team's size, cadence and pain - and state in two lines which you rejected and why.
Requirements:
1. Name the chosen model and the single biggest reason it fits this team.
2. Draw the branch map in text: what branches exist, their lifespan, who merges where.
3. Give the day-to-day command sequence a developer follows: start work -> stay in sync -> open PR -> merge.
4. Define the release path and the hotfix path separately, step by step.
5. Set 5-8 hard rules (branch naming, PR size cap, review requirement, who may touch main), each with the failure it prevents.
6. Include a two-week adoption plan that starts with the junior developer's first branch.
Output: a one-page team doc with the sections above; plain English, commands in code blocks. If a rule would not survive a busy week, cut it.
Grounding: recommend only within the stated tooling. If CI, protected branches or review features are unknown, ask numbered questions before finalising the rules section.Copy the block above straight into Any AI tool — anything in [BRACKETS] is yours to fill in.
Want it tuned to your business? Bring it to the free weekly call and we'll adapt it live.
Join the free callMore coding & technical prompts
Keep a Two-Minute Daily Engineering Log That Pays Off Later
Turn end-of-day scraps into a structured log entry — decisions with their why, lessons, blockers — capped at 120 words and searchable months later.
Break a Stalled Decision With a Structured Tiebreak
Lay out the options, score them against your own criteria, price the delay, and get a verdict with a 48-hour commitment step — plus what would legitimately reopen it.
Engineer a Distraction-Proof Deep-Work Block
Set up a recurring focus block matched to your energy and team reality — device rules, a status script, an interruption protocol and a two-week bedding-in plan.