Several places I've worked have a no merges on Friday policy. Even if it's not a policy, It's the way I prefer to work. It's not a steadfast rule, but it is a guideline. It's nice going into the weekend not worrying about a risky change you had planned.
The nice thing about this is it becomes a good time to work on all the other work that isn't strictly "delivering". Documentation, planning, 20% time, scripting, UX improvements are all great for Fridays. I like that it encourages me to dedicate time to activities which ultimately may have a multiplicative impact, and make the rest of the days easier, even if they don't strictly "deliver value to the customer"
This got me thinking about how I work and it made me come up with corallary which is "Merge Mondays".
If you believe in the adage, the only work that provides value is shipped work (which while not strictly true is a good shortcut) than Merge Mondays can be valuable for a few reasons.
- It's a great way to start your week. You can deliver the equivalent of a weeks worth of value in a couple hours.
- It's the best day to take on added risk. Your mind is fresh, you have the whole week to fix any problems.
- It's the best day to take on additional cognitive load. Often times things don't get merged for thorny reasons. Do they have the right tests? is the original contributor available? does something have to be fixed? When you're fresh and not in the middle of a bunch of other work is a good time to take on this load.
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