My ideal currently looks like: - trunk-based workflow. Small commits. No feature branches as a rule to be occasionally broken - unit tests move left - run pre

My ideal currently looks like: - trunk-based workflow. Small commits. No feature branches as a rule to be occasionally broken - unit tests move left - run pre-commit (not necessarily run in CI). Emphasis placed on them as a refactoring tool. - a critical, small suite of e2e and integration tests that block the pipeline before publication (fast feedback) - latest build publication being constantly redeployed to production, even if no changes have taken place to exercise the deployment routines - a larger suite of e2e and integration tests being constantly run against production, to give feedback when something isn't quite right, but it's not a disaster (slow, non-blocking feedback). In summary, emphasise getting code into production, minimise blocking tests to critical ones, test in production & notify when features are broken. Why? - Engineers spend too much time in test environments that give the illusion of the real thing. They lose touch with production as the Dev cycle increases in circumference. - Enabling tighter feedback cycles by accepting that some features are important and some are not helps put the cost of change into perspective for the entire product team. - Engineers get used to working in and around production on a daily basis. Production operations and observation of systems (& users) are emphasised - protective bubbles for writing code are minimised. You're not trying to maximise code output, you're trying to maximise the velocity of safe change, and you do that by understanding the environment (production) through your intelligence (observability of systems and user behaviour), so that you can employ your force (changes, code, features) rapidly and effectively, whilst maintaining the ability to quickly deal with unexpected problems (defects) along the way. Disclaimer: might not be possible for your specific theatre of war for any number of reasons.