Why every Project needs Continuous Integration?

What is Continuous Integration (CI) ?

Martin Fowler says

" Continuous Integration is a software development practice where members of a team integrate their work frequently, usually each person integrates at least daily - leading to multiple integrations per day. Each integration is verified by an automated build (including test) to detect integration errors as quickly as possible. Many teams find that this approach leads to significantly reduced integration problems and allows a team to develop cohesive software more rapidly."

The highlighted key words indicate the advantages of having Continuous build process. The idea is have the CI up and running before the project development phase starts.

CI makes sure that the team tackles the integration issues upfront otherwise build will keep failing continuously.

Tools such as BuildForge, Anthill and the open source CruiseControl can help you achieve the CI.

Statistical reports for code quality and other code metrics (using tools like Checkstyle, PMD, Java NCSS, JDepend) can be integrated with CI process to keep a tab on the health of the code base.