The weight of the past Agile testing

In Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino describes Zaira, a city where every action is shaped by memory—each street, each archway, each decision influenced by recollections of what came before.

As a Test Manager, I see Zaira in every Agile team I work with. It exists in the lingering impact of past failures, the fears rooted in old mistakes, and the knee-jerk reactions to anything that resembles a previous disaster.

Test failures, late deployments, bad audits, or leadership conflicts don’t just disappear. They leave emotional imprints that shape how teams respond to new challenges—often unconsciously. In high-pressure environments, this leads to emotional hijacks, where teams react based on past pain rather than the present reality.

A major flaw in Agile thinking is the belief that teams adapt logically to past failures. The reality? Many teams don’t learn—they overcorrect. A tester blamed for missing a critical defect may become overly cautious, second-guessing their instincts. Instead of learning and adapting, teams often react emotionally, reinforcing behaviors that may no longer serve them.

How do you know if your team is living in Zaira?

In Invisible Cities, Marco Polo describes Zaira’s structures as built from “delights and regrets, signs of a promised future.” The same is true for our teams. We can choose whether past failures define us—or refine us. Most retrospectives focus on process failures—but what about emotional responses? By analyzing not just technical causes but emotional triggers, teams begin to separate past experiences from present realities.

To reframe fear before high-stakes releases, conduct a resilience pre-mortem. This shifts teams from reaction to preparedness, preventing past traumas from hijacking present decisions. If something goes wrong, what’s the worst emotional response we might have? What’s a healthier way to handle it? Are we carrying emotional baggage from previous failures that don’t apply here?

To disrupt the vicious cycle a Test Manager must recognize when a team’s response is driven by history, not logic. Are we preventing failure, or just fearing it? Are we protecting quality, or just protecting ourselves? Are we being strategic, or avoiding past conflicts?

Zaira teaches us that history is unavoidable, but it doesn’t have to be a prison. Past failures shape us—but only if we reframe them as lessons, not ghosts. True quality in Agile teams isn’t just about test coverage or defect metrics—it’s about emotional resilience. The best teams acknowledge their past, but they don’t let it dictate their future.