[corpMaverick]

Yes, this is a good point. Branching goes against "continuous integration" principle. It reminds me when back in the day every developer had his/her on copy and everything was put together at the end.

Branching is very useful, but you need to continuously merge, so you find conflicts as soon as they arise.

[nradov]

If branches live too long that's usually a symptom of a deeper team dysfunction. They haven't done a good job of breaking down large user stories into small, discrete user stories.