Article · ~1,500 words

Daily Builds Are Your Friend

Joel Spolsky · Joel on Software Free Intermediate

This makes the case that working software should be produced and integrated constantly, so a broken or stalled build is caught in a day rather than a week. For an offshore team, an automated daily build is accountability that runs while you sleep: either the code compiles and works, or it does not. It is a short, practical read on making progress visible in the artifact itself instead of in a status report.

• Integrate and build every single day
• A broken build surfaces trouble within a day, not a sprint
• Let the build, not a meeting, tell you where things stand