What branching strategy would you recommend for a team of 8 engineers shipping a web app, and why?
What they are really testing: Whether you match process to context. Naming a strategy from a blog post without connecting it to release cadence is the failure mode here.
A real interview question
What branching strategy would you recommend for a team of 8 engineers shipping a web app, and why?
What most people say
drag me
“Git Flow, because it is the industry standard.”
Git Flow was designed for versioned software with multiple supported releases, and its own author has said it is a poor fit for continuously delivered web apps. Choosing it by reputation rather than by cadence is the tell.
The follow-ups they ask next
How do you merge unfinished work without breaking production?
Feature flags, defaulted off, so the code path is dormant. Deploy and release become separate events, and you get the integration benefit without the user-facing risk.
When would you actually reach for release branches?
When you support multiple versions simultaneously, like on-premise or mobile app releases where users are on older versions and you must backport fixes.
What the interviewer is listening for
- Derives the choice from release cadence
- Explains feature flags as the enabler
- Knows when heavier models are correct
What sinks the answer
- Names a strategy by reputation
- Comfortable with multi-week branches
- Cannot separate deploy from release
If you genuinely do not know
Say this instead of freezing. Reasoning out loud from what you do know beats silence every single time, and a good interviewer is listening for exactly that.
“For continuous delivery I would use [trunk-based with branches under 2 days], because [long branches hide integration problems until merge]. [Feature flags] let you merge unfinished work safely. [Release branches] are for [versioned software supporting multiple releases at once].”
Keep going with git
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