Taking responsibility for broken software builds: a part of daily team communication

Even though the software development team may comprise of highly-motivated professionals, they can still introduce inconsistencies in their code, and both the builds and the project code base can break from time to time. When it happens, it may take a while to figure out what the problem is and to find the one whose code broke the build. The team members can assume that someone is on top of the situation, a fix will soon happen and someone is dealing with the problem right now. Valuable time is lost while trying to sort the things out.

This is where TeamCity with its handy Take responsibility feature can be a really good remedy. When a build fails and the team members don't take any actions to change the situation, it is visible on TeamCity's web interface (and there are some other means to be notified on the fact). The developer who broke the build can take responsibility and provide some comment in just one click. TeamCity automatically informs the entire team who is working on a solution to the problem, lets the team members know when the fix is done or the responsible changes.

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