Why is tracking build time critical for software development teams?

Most software projects place more value or concern on features and functionality than build time. However, build time is a key statistic that directly affects developer output and release speed. Let’s explore why development teams should prioritize tracking and optimizing their build process to achieve fast build times.

What is build time?

The build time refers to the time developers need to transform code into a runnable application. Builds are performed at various stages of the application development life cycle, not just when the application is ready for release. Development, QA, and production builds are the common build types in a normal development team. However, other types of builds can depend on your project’s workflow. Build time usually varies depending on a project’s size and the frameworks used.

The cost of slow builds

When builds take too long, the impact ripples throughout the development process. A build that takes 3 minutes instead of 2 minutes might not sound significant, but when multiple developers make multiple builds daily, you’re looking at a substantial loss of productivity.

Think about a team of 20 developers, each running 10 builds per day. If each build takes 1 minute longer than necessary, that’s 200 minutes – or more than 3 hours – of lost productivity every day. Over a year, this amounts to thousands of hours of developer time spent waiting for builds to complete.

Also, using a paid CI/CD tool will cost you a lot since you are using a large amount of build minutes.

Long build times also directly impact:

• Developer flow state and satisfaction
• Release velocity and time-to-market
• Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipeline efficiency
• Infrastructure costs, especially in cloud environments
• Code review cycles and feedback loops

Why track build times?

1. Identify trends and problems early

Regular build time monitoring helps teams:

• Spot gradual degradation before it becomes critical.
• Identify problematic commits or changes that significantly impact build performance.
• Understand the correlation between codebase growth and build times that build up over time.

2. Make informed architectural decisions

Build time metrics inform crucial architectural choices:

• Whether to split a monolithic application into microservices.
• How to structure module dependencies.
• When to invest in build infrastructure improvements.

3. Justify infrastructure investments

With concrete data about build times and their impact, teams can better justify investments in:

• More powerful CI/CD infrastructure.
• Build optimization tools and frameworks.
• Developer workstation upgrades.

Measuring build speed: Key metrics that matter

Primary metrics

1. Total build time: The end-to-end duration from build initiation to completion. This should be tracked across different build types (clean, incremental, and production).
2. Build step duration: Detailed timing for each phase of the build process, including:
   Compilation time
   Test execution time
   Asset processing time
   Dependency resolution
   Packaging and deployment steps
3. Build success rate: The percentage of successful builds versus failures, as failed builds compound time waste.

Advanced metrics

1. Build-time trend: Tracks how build time changes, especially as the codebase grows or after architectural changes.
2. Developer wait time: The actual time developers spend waiting for builds, which may differ from raw build time.
3. Resource utilization: CPU, memory, and I/O usage during builds, which can help identify bottlenecks.

Best practices for build time tracking

Establish baselines and goals

Teams should:

• Set baseline metrics for acceptable build times.
• Establish clear goals for build performance.
• Create alerts for significant deviations from normal patterns.

Track multiple metrics

Monitor various aspects of the build process:

• Clean build time
• Incremental build time
• Cache hit rates
• Build success rates
• Time spent in different build phases

Implement regular reviews

Schedule regular reviews of build metrics to:

• Identify optimization opportunities.
• Assess the impact of previous optimization efforts.
• Plan future improvements.
• Share best practices across teams.

The ROI of build time optimization

Investing in build time tracking and optimization offers clear returns:

1. Increased engineering productivity

• Less time waiting for builds.
• Maintained focus and flow state.

2. Improved code quality

• More frequent testing.
• Quicker feedback on changes.
• Reduced likelihood of rushed commits.

3. Faster time to market

• Shorter development cycles.
• More efficient CI/CD pipelines.
• Quicker deployment of features and fixes.

4. Better resource utilization

• Optimized use of CI/CD resources.
• Reduced cloud computing costs.
• More efficient use of developer time.

Conclusion

Build time tracking is more than just monitoring a technical metric; it is about understanding and optimizing one of the most common developer processes. By treating build time as a critical performance indicator, teams can improve developer productivity, code quality, and delivery speed while reducing costs and technical debt.

The key is to start measuring now and turn build-time optimization into a continuous process rather than a one-time effort.

Remember, metric speed measures and proactive optimization can lead to fast build times, giving developers more time to focus on building great software.