Master environment per solution merge

[ewingjm]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

We have a relatively long pull request validation pipeline that runs for each solution merge pull request. This means that, due to the current blocking nature of solution merges, a problematic pull request can prevent completely unrelated solution merges (which may have only minor changes) from getting through. As the team grows, so does this issue.

Describe the solution you'd like

The option to either adopt a sequential merge strategy (i.e. what is currently implemented) or a parallel merge strategy for a given solution. The parallel merge strategy should provision a master environment for a given solution merge that exists until it is merged.

Additional context

Adopting a parallel merge strategy would likely mean:

• Locking the source control strategy down to 'Pull request'
• Locking the solution version down (setting the solution versions would need to be a CI pipeline activity)
• Needing a connection running as a user with greater privileges than system administrator (hence the option should still be there to use static environments)