Rob Fahrni on build breakage:

Working for a large company has it’s ups and downs. Once Visio became a part of Microsoft we had immediate access to cool tools to make our jobs better. Our test organization has probably benefitted the most, but we’ve also seen some cool stuff in development. Every large software company has their own set of home grown tools to help with the process. We had them at Visio, just not in large quantities like we have at MS. Anywho, back to the story. There’s been one area that has totally stunk since we started using some of the Office teams tools. Builds! The single most important thing to keep working is now often busted. Breaking the build should be punishable by death, ok maybe not death but you get the picture. The other cool tools we have access to don’t mean squat if you don’t have a build to work with.