Virtual Build Box Lava Lamps

Continuous Integration is the blood supply of an XP style team. The visibility of build box failures and time broken is important. It helps the team focus on keeping the build pristine. The team I'm working with uses CruiseControl to fire a warning audio and to change the state of a tray icon. This is great, particularly the audio, but it does not give us indication of how long it has been broken. So come back from lunch and not notice, or we loose the plot for a few hours and forget it.

One solution is to use Lava lamps. As they need to warm up their activity gives a nice feedback of just how green or how read we are. But they need power wiring (You could use the CruiseCotnrol X10 interface) and control and how do you handle multiple builds and multiple boxes?

The other option is to dedicate a screen on a wall. One company I worked with displayed the state of all builds on all boxes as a grid on this screen. It could be seen across the floor and worked well. But it does require a dedicated box and screen etc .

So what about the new digital picture frames now on the market. One from ThinkGeek looks interesting as it can be updated my email so a build box only needs to send an email. This means that a more informative and dynamic display in a team pit without the overhead of computer. I like the idea.

My thoughts of an ideal virtual lava lamp set-up:

• Audio play on build failure and on build fixed (as provided by CruiseControl tray tool).
  
• Screen in team pit displaying status as colour and animating time broken.
• Tray icon access for build box details (e.g. CruiseControl tray tool).
• Screen displays a history graph one or two (only) metrics like build time, code coverage, or number of unit tests. Whatever the team feels helps them at that time.
  

Perhaps I can use it at home to tell me if I have email, the weather forecast etc.