Namespace your personal branch(es) To reduce branch name clutter and indicate that you are the "lead" on a particular development thrust, only push branches with names that starts with your initials and a "/". Examples:
jr/smooth
bp/interpolate
Treat others' branches as read-only until establishing otherwise Communicate with the owner of a branch before doing any of your own work against it. That means don't make commits in someone else's branch, nor base a new branch of your own off of it, with first getting the go-ahead from the owner.
Don't revise the history of collaborative branches Don't ever rebase after either (1) you've given someone else the green light to collaborate with you on the branch, or (2) you've given me the green light to merge your branch into the master branch. (If you must, you can rebase or otherwise do history-revising actions until then.)
Request merge into master When you've completed branch work to the point that you want to merge it into the master branch, email Jim. Obviously this will happen when you totally finish your work, but also at key interim checkpoints such as when you:
produce some code that others might want to call from their scripts
have run your code to produce a significant output layer/results
submit a manuscript based on particular methods/results, etc
