The pain that slows teams down
When CI takes too long, teams stop trusting it. A single flaky test can waste hours of developer time and turn releases into a guessing game. The goal is fast, reliable signals that are easy to act on.
Changes that moved the needle
- Reduce noise first. Quarantine unstable tests and fix the top offenders.
- Shorten feedback loops. Split slow suites and run smoke tests on every PR.
- Make failures visible. Record screenshots, logs, and timing for each step.
- Assign owners. Every flaky test has a person and an expiration date.
Example: a simple quarantine label
labels:
- name: flaky
description: "Needs stabilization within 7 days"What I measure each week
- Median PR feedback time
- Flaky rate by suite
- Top three recurring failure signatures
Once these numbers are visible, it becomes much easier to keep CI healthy over time.