Recently a few of the developers on my team decided to put a build monitor up on the TV we have in our team area. They settled on a system called Siren of Shame. Essentially this monitor tells you the health of your builds (we use it with TFS but it supports many more source code repositories and build systems). Siren of shame has a little twist though that has some other advantages.

The system is built around a leader board and points system. For a successful build you get 1 point. For a failed build you lose 4 points. Not only do you lose points, the PC that the monitor is running on emits a very loud trumpet like alarm, alerting the team to you failed build. It is really rather amusing when the alarm goes off, although not so amusing for the poor person who has broken his build!!!

You can also earn awards the longer you use the system like CI NINJA and other such funny power ups. You also get awarded points for fixing someone else’s broken build. Whilst this is all amusing and a bit of fun, it does encourage a slight behaviour change in a team. For a start, no one wants to be at the bottom of the leader board, so to get a better position in the board you need to check in little and often, no more only checking in once a day as this should be frowned upon anyway.

I think using this tool has made a difference to the team in the short time we have been using it. I would summarise the benefits as:

• Visibility your build health.
• Encourage developers to check in little and often.
• Rewarded for fixing other peoples builds.
• Promotes a little healthy competition.
• More accuracy. No one wants that build siren going off as we poke fun at them..