A good friend of mine Geoff has a very interesting take on Build automation .
The biggest benefit i see of automation is that you can catch issues before it they start becoming expensive both in time wise and cost wise to fix.
The feedback loop provided by tools like cctray when things break is enough reasons to just do it. Its also the fun part of programming. To catch others when they lazily check in code without testing the impact.
Another very important aspect of automation is the ability to always demonstrate to the folks who foot the bill, whats cooking in the oven.
What better way to show off than actually showing code that works. Nothing can get you closer to this than automation.
