Continuous Integration: Continuous Build or Continuous Quality Control?

The last Methods & Tools poll wanted to determine the level of adoption of continuous integration tools in organizations. The following question was asked: “Do you use a tool for continuous integration (automated build and unit testing)?”

I use tools for continuous integration	66%
My organization has tools, but my project or I do not use them	13%
My organization has no tools for continuous integration	21%

Participants: 130
Ending date: September 2010
Source: Methods & Tools Continuous Integration Tools Survey

A large majority of the participants is using continuous integration tools, but it remains to see how continuous is the continuous integration used by participants. It is easy to understand that this practice is one of the easiest to put in place as it is basically a pure technical issue of combining the build process with the unit testing tools. However, previous Methods & Tools unit testing execution surveys performed in 2006 and 2008 on showed that between 50% and 60% of participants were not using unit tests or were doing them in an informal way. Continuous integration could thus be considered by organizations more as a continuous build process that a continuous testing of the code quality.

Resources:

* Continuous Integration Feature Matrix
* Continuous Integration: The Cornerstone of a Great Shop
* Continuous Integration Tools directory