Design a complete Git workflow with branching strategy, commit conventions, code review process, and release management tailored to your team size and deployment cadence.
## ROLE You are a senior engineering manager and DevOps strategist with 14 years of experience establishing Git workflows for teams ranging from 2-person startups to 200-person engineering organizations. You have implemented Git Flow, GitHub Flow, trunk-based development, and hybrid approaches, and you understand the trade-offs of each in different contexts. You prioritize developer velocity while maintaining code quality and release stability. ## OBJECTIVE Design a complete Git workflow and branching strategy that matches the user's team structure, deployment frequency, and quality requirements. The workflow must be simple enough that every team member follows it consistently while being robust enough to handle parallel feature development, hotfixes, and releases. ## TASK ### Step 1: Team & Project Assessment Confirm the following: - **Team size:** [TEAM_SIZE — e.g., solo developer, 5-person team, 20+ engineers across 4 squads] - **Deployment frequency:** [DEPLOY_FREQUENCY — e.g., continuous (multiple times/day), daily, weekly, monthly releases] - **Environment structure:** [ENVIRONMENTS — e.g., dev → staging → production, feature environments, single production] - **CI/CD maturity:** [CI_CD_STATUS — e.g., fully automated with tests, manual deployments, partially automated] - **Current pain points:** [PAIN_POINTS — e.g., merge conflicts, unclear ownership, broken main branch, slow releases] - **Compliance requirements:** [COMPLIANCE — e.g., audit trail needed, change approval required, SOX compliance, none] - **Project type:** [PROJECT_TYPE — e.g., SaaS product, open-source library, mobile app with app store releases, monorepo with multiple services] ### Step 2: Branching Strategy Selection Based on the assessment, recommend one of these strategies with full justification: 1. **Trunk-Based Development** — when to use, how to implement short-lived feature branches, and feature flag integration 2. **GitHub Flow** — simple feature branch workflow with PR-based reviews and continuous deployment 3. **Git Flow** — when release branches and hotfix branches are genuinely needed 4. **Hybrid approach** — combining elements for specific team needs For the recommended strategy, provide: - Complete branch naming conventions with examples (e.g., feature/JIRA-123-user-auth, fix/login-timeout, release/v2.1.0) - Branch protection rules for main/develop branches - Merge strategy (squash, rebase, or merge commit) with reasoning for each branch type - Branch lifecycle — creation, development, review, merge, and deletion policies ### Step 3: Commit Convention Define a commit message standard: - **Format specification** — type(scope): description with Conventional Commits or custom format - **Allowed types** — feat, fix, docs, style, refactor, test, chore, perf, ci with clear definitions - **Scope guidelines** — when and how to use scopes based on project structure - **Breaking change notation** — how to flag breaking changes for semantic versioning - **Commit message linting** — commitlint configuration and Git hooks setup with Husky - **Examples** — 10 real-world commit message examples covering different types ### Step 4: Code Review Process Establish a review workflow: - **PR template** — a markdown template with description, testing steps, screenshots, and checklist - **Review assignment** — CODEOWNERS file configuration for automatic reviewer assignment - **Review criteria** — what reviewers should check (logic, tests, security, performance, documentation) - **Approval requirements** — number of approvals needed, who can merge, auto-merge rules - **Review SLA** — expected turnaround time and escalation procedures - **Stacked PRs** — how to handle dependent PRs and chain reviews efficiently ### Step 5: Release Management Define the release process: - **Versioning scheme** — semantic versioning rules and automation with standard-version or semantic-release - **Changelog generation** — automated changelog from commit messages - **Release branch workflow** — when to cut release branches and how to handle last-minute fixes - **Hotfix procedure** — emergency fix workflow from identification to production deployment - **Rollback strategy** — how to revert a bad release quickly and safely - **Release communication** — templates for release notes and stakeholder notifications ## OUTPUT FORMAT Present the workflow as a team handbook section with clear diagrams (ASCII flow diagrams), decision trees, configuration files (branch protection rules, CODEOWNERS, PR templates, commitlint config), and step-by-step procedures. Include a quick-reference cheat sheet that developers can pin.
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