oliverdavies.uk/content/node.e01efd03-7851-41b8-a34d-7b7a56d77d31.yml

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title:
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      Ship, Show or Ask
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      <p>"Ship / Show / Ask" describes itself as a self-described modern branching strategy that combines the features of pull or merge requests with the ability to keep shipping changes.</p>

      <p>Each change is either a "Ship", "Show", or "Ask".</p>

      <h2 id="ship">Ship</h2>

      <p>"Ship" changes are what I most commonly do with continuous integration and trunk-based development projects. Changes are committed directly to the main branch and shipped - assuming that the CI pipeline and any other automated checks pass. There is no blocking code review or pull request for "Ship" changes.</p>

      <h2 id="show">Show</h2>

      <p>"Show" changes are made on a temporary branch instead of the mainline. This branch is then used to create a pull request which is closed once the CI checks pass without any code review.</p>

      <p>Once the pull request is merged, the change is deployed, but the pull request is still available as somewhere to have feedback and conversation about the change.</p>

      <p>This is something that I did today after starting to write a new feature by implementing the Decorator design pattern, and wanted others to be aware of this approach and ask any questions.</p>

      <p>Another reason for this approach is if someone wants to ensure that the CI checks will pass before merging to mainline. Some Developers worry about breaking the CI pipeline with a trunk-based approach and blocking others, so want to know that the pipeline will continue to work and they aren't disrupting other team members.</p>

      <h2 id="ask">Ask</h2>

      <p>This is how I've worked on most projects before, and still with some clients where they want to review changes before merging, or maybe I want to have a discussion and review a change beforehand.</p>

      <p>This is also common when new Developers join a project or need to change some code they haven't worked on before.</p>

      <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2>

      <p>I like the flexibility and balance of this approach. I prefer to work on "mostly ship" projects, and most of the show and ask conversations happen during pair or mob programming sessions.</p>

      <p>Some of my clients where I work with teams are "mostly ask" and work in a more Git Flow-type way and want to review any changes before they're merged and deployed.</p>

      <p>But if you're working on a "mostly ask" project and want to move to "mostly ship", then aiming to move to "mostly show" is a good intermediate step and a way to reduce shipping time or develop and build confidence in the CI pipeline before moving to trunk-based development and removing the manual review step.</p>

      <p>The full article with more information is at https://martinfowler.com/articles/ship-show-ask.html.</p>

              
    format: full_html
    processed: |
      <p>"Ship / Show / Ask" describes itself as a self-described modern branching strategy that combines the features of pull or merge requests with the ability to keep shipping changes.</p>

      <p>Each change is either a "Ship", "Show", or "Ask".</p>

      <h2 id="ship">Ship</h2>

      <p>"Ship" changes are what I most commonly do with continuous integration and trunk-based development projects. Changes are committed directly to the main branch and shipped - assuming that the CI pipeline and any other automated checks pass. There is no blocking code review or pull request for "Ship" changes.</p>

      <h2 id="show">Show</h2>

      <p>"Show" changes are made on a temporary branch instead of the mainline. This branch is then used to create a pull request which is closed once the CI checks pass without any code review.</p>

      <p>Once the pull request is merged, the change is deployed, but the pull request is still available as somewhere to have feedback and conversation about the change.</p>

      <p>This is something that I did today after starting to write a new feature by implementing the Decorator design pattern, and wanted others to be aware of this approach and ask any questions.</p>

      <p>Another reason for this approach is if someone wants to ensure that the CI checks will pass before merging to mainline. Some Developers worry about breaking the CI pipeline with a trunk-based approach and blocking others, so want to know that the pipeline will continue to work and they aren't disrupting other team members.</p>

      <h2 id="ask">Ask</h2>

      <p>This is how I've worked on most projects before, and still with some clients where they want to review changes before merging, or maybe I want to have a discussion and review a change beforehand.</p>

      <p>This is also common when new Developers join a project or need to change some code they haven't worked on before.</p>

      <h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2>

      <p>I like the flexibility and balance of this approach. I prefer to work on "mostly ship" projects, and most of the show and ask conversations happen during pair or mob programming sessions.</p>

      <p>Some of my clients where I work with teams are "mostly ask" and work in a more Git Flow-type way and want to review any changes before they're merged and deployed.</p>

      <p>But if you're working on a "mostly ask" project and want to move to "mostly ship", then aiming to move to "mostly show" is a good intermediate step and a way to reduce shipping time or develop and build confidence in the CI pipeline before moving to trunk-based development and removing the manual review step.</p>

      <p>The full article with more information is at https://martinfowler.com/articles/ship-show-ask.html.</p>

              
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