Trunk-Based Development: Why Most Teams Think They Use It (But Don’t)

Many teams claim to practice trunk-based development but actually run a slower hybrid of feature-branch workflows. Real trunk-based development requires merging to main multiple times daily, keeping PRs small (under ~300 lines), fast code reviews (hours not days), feature flags to safely merge incomplete work, and CI/CD pipelines under 10 minutes. Common failure points include oversized PRs, slow async reviews, fear of merging unfinished code, and missing feature flags. A real-world example shows that enforcing same-day mergeability, a 300-line PR soft limit, and feature flags reduced PR size by 40%, cut review time to hours, and increased merge frequency within three weeks.