Quick answer: Long build times are dev experience killers. Tracking build time per commit surfaces regressions; treating it as a quality metric drives investment in fixes.
Build time is invisible to most teams. Track it; surfaces immediate opportunities.
Log per build
Per CI build, log total time. Trend over commits; spikes surface regressions.
Per-stage breakdown
Compile, shader, asset, package. Each stage tracked separately; bottleneck is visible.
Set a budget
10 minutes total. Above = investigate. Engineers feel the cost; investment follows.
Celebrate wins
'Build time dropped 30% after Burst migration'. Team sees the impact; future investments easier to justify.
“Developer experience compounds. Faster builds = more iterations; more iterations = better game.”
Build time is one of the cheapest metrics to track. The cost is a CI log line; the value is significant.