This also works for me for the following reasons: * Simple but quite expressive, covering a large number of use-cases. * Reliable - there's not much in the wa

This also works for me for the following reasons: * Simple but quite expressive, covering a large number of use-cases. * Reliable - there's not much in the way of rope to hang yourself. * It's easy to explain to people new to git or software development. It certainly works well for small teams, but I'm not sure how far it would scale - probably quite well as long as there are not too many deviations. Also as a starting point for development with git it's hard to fault. As you become more familiar/confident you can start to add more complex commands ( rebasing history, etc.) and build quite a sophisticated workflow. UPDATE: As to the why branch just use continuous integration debate, well continuous integration works just fine as long as your window to deployment is short (hours or a small number of days). With anything that takes a little longer or involves database migrations then branching in some form is still required. So rather than being an either/or situation they really just overlap in practice and one does not preclude the other.