1.7Transitioning Between Strategies

Teams often start with GitFlow and migrate toward GitHub Flow or trunk-based development as their automation matures. If your team is considering a transition, here is what QA needs to prepare:

Moving from GitFlow to GitHub Flow

1. Speed up the pipeline: GitHub Flow relies on PR checks as the primary gate. If your pipeline takes 40 minutes, PRs will be painful.
2. Eliminate the release branch test phase: All testing must happen on the PR. Any tests that only ran on the release branch must move to the PR pipeline.
3. Improve test reliability: In GitFlow, a flaky test on the release branch might be tolerated. In GitHub Flow, a flaky test blocks every PR.

Moving from GitHub Flow to Trunk-Based

1. Implement feature flags: You need a way to deploy incomplete features safely.
2. Reduce pipeline time to under 10 minutes: Developers cannot wait 20 minutes for every small commit.
3. Achieve near-zero flaky test rate: Every test failure on main blocks the team.
4. Shift QA earlier: QA must participate in design and requirements, not wait for code.