Ambient awareness of build status in collocated software teams

We describe the evaluation of a build awareness system that assists agile software development teams to understand current build status and who is responsible for any build breakages. The system uses ambient awareness technologies, providing a separate, easily perceived communication channel distinct from standard team workflow. Multiple system configurations and behaviours were evaluated. An evaluation of the system showed that, while there was no significant change in the proportion of build breakages, the overall number of builds increased substantially, and the duration of broken builds decreased. Team members also reported an increased sense of awareness of, and responsibility for, broken builds and some noted the system dramatically changed their perception of the build process making them more cognisant of broken builds.