TFS Build Wallboard or Continuous Integration Psychology

In the project I currently work on, none of the developers previously worked with Team Foundation Source Code and in a project where a build server is installed.  I asked them to install Team Build Tray, a build notification tool that pops a toast when a build completes so they can be notified if it built successfully or not.  BTW, there are many such tools, one is included in the TFS Power Tools.

That’s cool but I wanted to add more punch to it so I looked for an app that could display full screen the build results and I found TFS Build Wallboard and installed it on a computer near the dev team.

I wanted to add even more punch so I looked on the Internet for Homer Simpson WAV files where he would says “Woohoo!” and “Doh!” and modified the code to play the WAV files to add sound to the notifications and to change the background color for green when a build builds and red when a build fails.

OMG!  The psychological aspect of the whole thing works like I never thought it would work.  I know that in a perfect world, we should never have a failed build but in real life, it happens.  So when we hear a loud “Doh!”, you can be sure that the error is fixed almost right away.  Cool!