Ship/Show/Ask: A Branching Strategy for Modern Dev Teams With Rouan Wilsenach

The branching strategy has been reimagined. Meet the mind behind it.

In his first-ever podcast appearance, Rouan Wilsenach, author of "Ship/Show/Ask: A Modern Branching Strategy," joins Dev Interrupted to talk about his work as an author and the inspiration behind his musings on branching strategy. Rouan has been more than an inspiration, he’s changed the way our dev teams work - and he might just change yours, too. If you haven’t already read "Ship/Show/Ask," you should. It’s one of the most influential articles we’ve read in years.

Episode Highlights

• (2:37) Inspiration behind Ship/Show/Ask
• (8:17) What is Ship?
• (10:34) What is Ask?
• (16:44) What is Show?
• (21:48) LinearB's gitStream
• (26:28) Reception to Ship/Show/Ask
• (36:01) Rouan's #1 takeaway for dev teams

Episode Excerpts

Do PRs Make the Software Industry More Inclusive?

Rouan: I think that pull requests- obviously pull requests in and of themselves are not going to make the industry more inclusive, but they can help because it enables asynchronous communication, and when we're working remotely, people can take jobs they wouldn't be able to take otherwise. When you're working asynchronously, people who have other responsibilities like childcare or health requirements, they can work in a way that they wouldn't have been able to before. People who are in different time zones can work together, and so I think for people who are deep into the trunk-based development of continuous innovation and flow. I would say that pull requests can be a really useful tool to widen the net.

Rouan’s 1 Takeaway From His Research

Rouan: It's tricky to have one takeaway. I suppose, if I was to say if there was one takeaway, it would be that you have to have people thinking and talking about the changes that they're making. So, I think it's very difficult to have a blanket rule that works for every team and for every code change. The thing that we want to get better at as engineers is making changes safety. Branching strategy is one component of being able to make changes safely, and so I think as teams, we should all be talking about how do we get to make changes safely, and if a change in your branching strategy comes out of that, then that's great if that's what your team needs. But I think that conversation about how do we make changes safely, and sort of get going, that's the conversation to have.

Additional Video and About Interact

Also, you are invited to join engineering leaders from Shopify, Stripe, Slack, and more at Interact on October 25th. This is a free, virtual, community-driven engineering leadership conference featuring over 25 of the most respected minds in development, all selected by the thousands of engineering leaders in the Dev Interrupted community.