CI with Test Automation not easy but with great benefits!

The lean approach is to attack the set-up time and drive it down to the point where continuous integration is fast and painless. This is a difficult discipline, partly because developing a rapid build and test capability requires time, skill, and ongoing attention, and partly because stopping to fix problems can be distracting.

But a great epiphany occurs once a software development team finds ways to do rapid builds and continuous integration and everyone faithfully stops to fix problems as soon as they are detected.

We have been told many times that this is a very difficult discipline to put in place, but once it is working, no one would ever think of going back to the old way of doing things. Invariably teams experience an accelerating ability to get work done, which makes believers out of the skeptics.

- Mary Poppendieck & Tom Poppendieck (2006), Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash, Addison-Wesley Professional