A quick little tip if you’re working in a CI environment for monitoring the build progress after you’ve done a check-in. Typically you go to the Team Explorer window and view the build progress/results in there. Visual Studio has a handy little Build Notifications Application that provides instant visibility of the build status
Go to:
1.    C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0Common7ToolsShortcuts and Run Build Notifications
2.    Right click the application in the windows system tray and select Options
3.    Select the builds you want to monitor – you probably don’t want all of them selected
4.    Click OK
5.    Configure the tray icon to show notifications and icons

6.    Sit back and view the notifications appearing on your desktop when someone checks-in code.