Automated builds and tests already have a long tradition at codecentric, but we never managed to put up build radiators in our new offices. Till today. Developers could have looked up the status in the past, but getting it pushed to you while enjoying a hot coffee or tea helps. This is because when you forget checking for your build status it is most likely red.

Some months ago we had a CI server shootout, mainly between Atlassian Bamboo and Hudson. We allowed two months for carefully evaluating both of them. And in the end, Hudson was the close winner. One feature though, that we liked a lot about Bamboo, was the tight integration into Jira (surprise, surprise). With these new portlets for Jira, Hudson can measure up easily: job overview, recent builds and charts of various now can relatively easily be integrated into the Jira Dashboard.

Download and installation instruction: jira-hudson-plugin 1.0

Ah, by the way, this is published under the Apache 2.0 license. At some point, this will probably move to the Atlassian plugin exchange. Please comment if you find this useful, and what other features you would like to see.

Update (2009-09-10): The plugin is now listed on the Atlassian Plugin Exchange.

One of the biggest problems in agile development teams is “effort”. Of course it is always about effort, because effort is money and we all like our money. In planning we can cope with effort quite easily: “oh that’s a week effort”, but when it comes down to “what to do today” we start struggling. And how can we complete the “one week effort” if we struggle with our daily work?

My proposal for solving this issue is: At the end of the day, whatever you have done this day, if it is not complete, throw it away!

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