Are you using GitFlow?

(See https://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/)

What does Done mean? Does your feature have to pass QA before it is considered "Done"? You could deploy your feature branch to QA and then when it passes QA finish the feature. When you finish a feature, the feature branch is merged into the develop branch.

• master/main branch - Production (always reflects a production-ready state)
• hotfix/ - Branch off master/main branch. Used for urgent fixes
• release/ - Branch off the develop branch when creating the next release. After final testing, the release branch is merged into both main/master and develop. Plus a tagged created too.
• feature/ - Branch off the develop branch to start working on the next feature.

Here is a git-flow cheatsheet https://danielkummer.github.io/git-flow-cheatsheet/

The git-flow (https://github.com/nvie/gitflow) library of git subcommands can help automate parts of the flow to make it easier.