In short, Conway's Law says any organisation that designs a system will come up with a system design that copies the organisational communication structures.

Over the years, many individuals rephrased Conway's Law in various ways.

Every paraphrase brings new insights and non-negligible consequences. Sometimes they give the impression of contradicting each other. However, in the end, they all come to the same conclusion. The organisation and the system keep each other in balance. Modifying the organisation will have an impact on the system. Modifying the system will have an impact on the organisation. Not considering that will cause friction in the organisation or the system with dramatic consequences.

To be competitive as an organisation in the market, and to effectively design the right thing our customers expect us to deliver, we'd better understand and take advantage of this.

Feature branching is again gaining in popularity due to the rise of Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS). Although branch creation became very easy with DVCSs, it comes with a certain cost. Long living branches break the flow of the software delivery process impacting throughput and stability.

This session explores some of the reasons teams are using feature branches for, what problems are introduced by using feature branches and what techniques exist to avoid them all together. In conclusion it explores what exactly is evil about feature branching. Which is not necessarily the problems they introduce. But rather the real reasons teams are using them for.

The key takeaway is an appreciation of a different branching strategy and how it relates to Continuous Integration.

The target audience is anyone using version control systems in a Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery context.