Managing EF Core Migrations in Large Teams: Best Practices for SQL Server
Your team of 8 developers is working on different features. Developer A adds a new table, Developer B modifies an existing column, Developer C renames a property. All three create migrations on the same day.
When you try to merge everything together, EF Core explodes with migration conflicts, database schema mismatches, and mysterious errors about missing tables. Sound familiar?
Large teams need structured approaches to EF Core migrations, or you’ll spend more time fixing database issues than building features.
The Migration Conflict Problem
EF Core migrations are sequential by design. Each migration has a timestamp-based filename and builds on the previous one:
20250923_081234_AddCustomerTable.cs
20250923_091456_AddOrderTable.cs // Depends on Customer table
20250923_095612_AddCustomerEmail.cs // Also modifies Customer table
When multiple developers create migrations simultaneously, you get parallel branches that can’t merge cleanly:
Feature Branch A: AddCustomerTable -> AddCustomerEmail
Feature Branch B: AddCustomerTable -> AddOrderTable
Feature Branch C: AddCustomerTable -> ModifyCustomerName
Merging these creates a broken migration history where later migrations reference schema changes that don’t exist in the merged timeline.
Team Workflow Strategy
1. Feature Branch Guidelines
Each developer works in feature branches with clear migration rules:
# Developer starts new feature
git checkout -b feature/customer-management
dotnet ef migrations …