Let Developers Be the First Line of Test: Five Minutes That Boosts Quality and Collaboration

Five minutes of developers time can make all the difference

Here’s a simple yet powerful strategy: Involve developers in testing each other’s code before it reaches testers. This approach reduces obvious bugs, gives testers time to focus on complex issues, and cuts down on the administrative burden of tracking problems.

I first put this in action years ago when I was managing the test effort for a company providing custom software development teams. The challenge? Clients typically only wanted to pay for developers and not for testers. This meant that I had to coach developers to test and create a test process that suited their workflow. The team was great, and the results were enlightening!

The change that made the biggest difference? A simple rule: for each pull request, developers had to do two things—code review and a quick manual test of their colleague’s new code before any delivery to the main branch. The goal wasn’t to spend hours testing. Instead, as a rule of thumb, the developers should spend five minutes checking basics and using their intuition and knowledge to spot obvious flaws. If they did spend more than five minutes on testing it was because they had found something saving way more time downstream.

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Here’s what happened:  

1. Obvious issues were caught early— just like the spelling mistakes we all miss in our own writing but are easily spotted by other people. This freed time previously spent on bug administration since they could create a fix immediately before delivery.  

2. Collaboration improved dramatically. Instead of hiding behind code, developers openly discussed features, requirements, and alternative solutions. These conversations led to better designs, clarified specs, and even faster development.

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My original theory was that developers would double-check their work to avoid looking bad since their colleague sitting next to them would test their work. But that wasn’t what happened! What I hadn’t anticipated was how this small time investment created space for meaningful dialogue. Under pressure to deliver, it is not uncommon for teams to skip these discussions. By mandating a pause to test, we sparked collaboration that spread knowledge, aligned priorities, and unified the team. The result was not about avoiding looking bad but became about creating something great together.  

I reproduced these results in another development organisation where I performed a workshop over a couple days. In this organisation there were multiple development teams that shared a couple of testers were overwhelmed with simple, obvious bugs, leaving no time for deeper testing. Once developers performed the initial test the testers could focus on what they do best: using their test design skills to uncover complex issues. In addition, some issues, that required technical domain knowledge about the code, were now caught at an early stage. The feedback was that this was the most impactful change they’d ever made to their development process despite being one of the least costly.

Yet, surprisingly, many organisations seem to resist this type of workflow and this despite multiple modern development approaches promoting similar approaches, from Extreme Programming to different Agile practices. I once had a heated debate with a development manager who insisted developers should not test their code, NEVER! That project languished for eight months, stuck in a cycle where the critical bug-trend never pointed towards zero. The project was eventually scaled back to a fraction of its original scope to be able to ship at all.  

Why does this work?

- Fresh perspectives catch what you might overlook. Tunnel vision is natural—we’re all human.

- Developers have domain specific knowledge. Some issues are more effectively caught by developers with intimate knowledge about the technical aspect of the code.  

- Collaboration thrives when you give it room to breathe. That five-minute test isn’t just about bugs—it’s a chance to discuss requirements, share knowledge, and align on goals.  

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So, here’s the takeaway: Let developers be the first line of testing. It’s a low-cost, high-impact shift that improves quality, frees up testers, and reduces the headache of cumbersome bug administration. And as a bonus? Your team might just start working better together.  

Give it a try. Even five minutes can transform your team’s quality and collaboration.