A Broken Build is a "Stop the Presses" Event

A breaking continuous build system is a Stop-the-Presses event. We pause our work and gather around to fix the failing build together.

I’ve frequently seen teams silence the alarms by turning on the “ignore” flag on the failing tests, or deleting the tests all together. Just to stop the “nuisance” notification emails.

But that only hides problems, and can lead to broken software being deployed. Instead, it’s important for the team to be encouraged and given the ability to prioritize fixing the tests, rather than being pressured to quickly meet some other completion deadline.

Discussions for your team

• If the continuous build breaks, who will lead the team to focus on the fix?
• Are build failures surfaced quickly?
• What might cause a situation where failing tests are removed or silenced instead of fixed?