The logs were a blur of warnings, the dependencies a maze. Hours went by. People guessed, rolled back, patched, guessed again. Then someone said it: “We need a real Baa POC.”
Baa POC. Build-as-a-Service Proof of Concept. A focused test to find out if a system can truly deliver modular, fast, and reliable builds without locking developers into painful workflows. It’s the simplest way to see if the promise matches reality. Not a slide deck. Not a pitch. A running thing you can break, fix, and trust.
A good Baa POC answers one question: can this platform handle what your team throws at it? That means not just green builds, but quick feedback, predictable caching, dependency isolation, parallel execution, and scaling without manual babysitting. Done right, it eliminates the hidden waste in CI pipelines — the delays, the flaky runners, the endless “it works on my machine” cycles.
Most teams wait too long to run a Baa POC. They compare vendor checklists and read case studies, but nothing beats seeing your actual repo build, test, and ship on the platform. You need real performance numbers. You need to shake it, see where it bends, see where it doesn’t.