- After you've selected a feature to work on, create a branch in your local repo to build it in.
- $ git checkout -b calaway/short_description_of_feature
 
- Implement the requested feature, make sure all tests are passing, and commit all changes in the new branch.
- Checkout the master branch locally.
- $ git checkout master
 
- Pull down the master branch from GitHub to get the most up to date changes from others. If you practice git workflow as described here you should never have a merge conflict at this step.
- $ git pull origin master
 
- Make sure all tests are passing on master and then checkout your new branch.
- $ git checkout calaway/short_description_of_feature