Ivan

build-o-matic and the visibility of the build results

Following on from a previous article about build-o-matic and having talked to Andy Pols at XTC about it, Andy commented:

Can you put some screen shots of your build with the images of the people who committed. I remember you told me you used southpark charactures.

Can you blog about how this changed the teams attitude to the build. I think it's a facinating and important discovery.

Making the build web page interesting

Someone (probably James Gellately-Smith) suggested using South Park Studio to create pictures of everyone on the team for use on the planning board to put next to stories to show who is working on which story. We each made an image of someone else on the team, these were then printed in color, cut out and laminated, with velcro stuck on the back so they could be put on the planning board, and moved as appropriate. They were a bit hit with the team.

I made build-o-matic scrape the commit messages to find developers' names or initials and match them to these images and put them in the build results page. The results can be seen below:

(this is based on a real build-o-matic page from my previous client (included here with permission from the team) - the names and check in messages have been altered to protect the innocent).

The effect of the build-o-matic web page

The effect of having the images in the build page took me by suprise. When people first saw the page, they laughed, and it certainly got everyone's attention. People started taking more notice of the build. Chris Clarke modified build-o-matic to make the page background red if the build was broken. People took even more notice - their pictures would be on a red build page if they broke the build. People took fixing the build more seriously than before.

Also, build-o-matic shows who checked in as soon as a modification is detected and the build started. This meant that people who had just checked in would notice if their pictures appeared on the web page and know that build-o-matic was running the build with their modifications.

Having the pictures on the build page also gives a more immediately noticable indication of who has been checking in. A quick scroll down the page shows who is working by themselves, who is checking in frequently and who isn't. This information is available in other ways, but the build-o-matic web page is immediate and easy to view.