CI is a good argument for centralised source control, and like you say it is possible to get 90% of the benefits just using git-svn (I have done in the past).

CI is a good argument for centralised source control, and like you say it is possible to get 90% of the benefits just using git-svn (I have done in the past). The real power for me is the branching, especially shared branching. My workflow is like this, each dev has their own github repo which is up to date with whatever is in their local repo. So even if someone is working on esoteric weird crap, I can see it (ircbot telling you about commits) and I can pull it. For CI we have a server that is also running a git repo of it's own. Anyone can push branches to it and they'll get put through CI. So I can now take my branch, pull 3 or 4 peoples feature branches merge them locally then push to CI repo to see if anything is broken. If it is, I can fix some of it and push it back to whoever needs to know if there is something I don't understand. It's a joy.