I’ve been thinking a lot recently about build systems and how they affect Quality. The answer it seems, is a heck of a lot. A good build system is an essential part of today’s development infrastructure. Especially when you throw CI, static analysis and code inspection into the mix. Once you add all these things, the Build Manager becomes not only the producer of binaries, but as keeper of the quality canary they are a critical link in the quality process.

In an pure agile team, the answer to where they report is simple because everyone is responsible for everything. But in a more traditional organization structure, where does the Build Manager slot into the org chart?

  • In development because they are producing the final output of the group for all other internal and external customers?
  • In the QA / Test group because of all the cool Quality things that can be driven through the build these days?
  • In IT because they serve both Dev and QA and are part of the overall corporate infrastructure?
  • Other?