Build Health
This metric tracks the health of builds in an iteration. It helps teams assess their adoption of iterative development best practices.
Main Description

Overview

The Build Health metric measures the intervals (in units of time) that you have a failed build, and the intervals (in units of time) that you have a clean build. Iterative development involves incrementally building working software. As a result, the build should not stay failed for long, especially at the end of the iteration. 

An important piece of information to capture along with this metric is the number of total tests that are used to test the build.

Measurement Method

Number of tests = total number of tests in a test suite at a given time

Clean build range = interval of time that the build remains clean

Failed build Range = interval of time that the build remains failed 

Build Health is captured in IBM® Rational® Team Concert®.

Measurement Analysis

A good way to monitor iteration  Build Health over time is to plot the chart. The following figure shows an example of a  Build Health chart.

                                     Build Health Report

The green area shows the time when the health stays clean, whereas the red area shows the time when the build failed. Watch for long periods of failed builds, which could indicate problems resolving compilation or test failures.  A long period of failure indicates that there may be serious problems in need of attention.

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