What is Trunk-Based Development? — UK Software Development Guide
Direct Answer
Trunk-Based Development (TBD) is a version control strategy where developers commit directly to a single shared branch ("trunk" or "main") — or use very short-lived feature branches (less than 1 day). This contrasts with long-lived feature branches (days or weeks). TBD enables continuous integration: because everyone is working on the same branch, conflicts are discovered and resolved immediately rather than accumulating over days.
Trunk-based-development in the UK
Trunk-Based Development is the approach used by the world's highest-performing software teams (per DORA research). It enables the high deployment frequency required for Cyber Essentials patch management (rapid security patch deployment). UK caveats: TBD requires mature automated testing to be safe (you need confidence that every commit is deployable), and it requires feature flags to hide incomplete work from users. For most UK product teams with solid CI/CD and test coverage, TBD is the recommended approach; for less mature teams, short-lived feature branches (1–3 days) are a stepping stone.
Related Glossary Terms
DEVOPS
DevOps explained for UK software developers and business owners. DevOps is a set of practices, principles, and culture that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) t... UK context, examples, and related services.
Technical-debt
Technical Debt explained for UK software developers. Technical debt is the implied cost of future rework caused by choosing an easy solution now instead of using a better ap... UK context and related services.
Kubernetes
Kubernetes explained for UK software developers. Kubernetes (commonly abbreviated as K8s) is an open-source container orchestration platform that automates the deploymen... UK context and related services.
GRAPHQL
GraphQL explained for UK software developers. GraphQL is a query language for APIs and a server-side runtime for executing those queries, developed by Meta (Facebook)... UK context and related services.
Typescript
TypeScript explained for UK software developers. TypeScript is a programming language developed by Microsoft that adds static type definitions to JavaScript. TypeScript ... UK context and related services.
Docker
Docker explained for UK software developers. Docker is a platform that packages software and its dependencies into standardised units called containers. A Docker con...
Get Expert Advice on Trunk-based-development
Speak with our UK software development experts about Trunk-based-development. Free consultation, transparent pricing, no obligation.