Circumventing Build Process happens for many reasons. For example, it can happen because market place pressure force someone to decide schedule is more important than software quality.

Another example, might be that the person making the decision to circumvent the build process does not understand the implications of their decision. conception to release.

How organizations decide to handle it is where this can become a SCM War Story.

Circumventing the Build Process Antipattern

The software project is behind schedule. Customers are impatiently demanding the new release. Pressure to circumventing build process.

Everyone in the software industry can identify with this situation.

The Background

Large development team 250+ developers
5 geographical locations
9,500,000 lines of code
Build can take days to complete
Testing can take several days to complete

The Story

The project is months late
There is a candidate release and testing is looking great
Plans are made for this to be the release

The Rub

A critical bug is found
A critical decision must be made
Do we fix the bug for this release or create a patch for the customer
It looks bad to ship a software product and days later require your customers to patch your product
However, it will take a full day to rebuild and several more to retest everything

The Decision

Bastardize the build so we can short-circut the testing phase

The Results

The company was able to ship the product two days earlier by not doing to full build and testing
However, by manually messing with the build process a piece was missed
The customers who attempted to upgrade broke their systems
An emergency patch needed to be created
The customers were very angry. Many threatening to move to competitors product
Company reputation damaged

The Lesson's Learned

Follow the automated build process
Complete all testing after every build

Best Practice Description

Follow the Automated Build Process This may sound obvious, but Do Not Circumvent the Automated Build Process By following the automated build process you ensure
Build Integrity
Reproducibility
Build Repeatability
Automated Build Process