Meaningful Git Branch Names

Having a team standard for branch names need not be a complicated matter. But the standard should be meaningful.

Git branch names are malleable and as such give the developer the ability to convey a lot of meaningful information. Our team’s goal was to give enough information to identify the initial owner of the branch, a succinct description of the feature, and a meaningful ID that allowed us to link the branch back to our issue tracking software.

Our convention is as follows:

[developer initials]/[feature]/[issue]

[developer initials] are mandatory, as they denote who is primarily responsible for the branch.

[feature] is mandatory too, but it’s only expected to hint at what the branch is about and give fellow developers an understanding of the purpose of the branch.

[issue] gives other developers an indication of where to find more details about this particular branch. CP356 would be the Client Portal board, card number 356 in our Kanban tool. Not all branches have a corresponding card, so this is optional.