The Forgotten Test Suite: Lessons from an Abandoned Cemetery
Modern QA Must Remember
In the late 1800s, a journalist described their walk through a neglected cemetery in Newton, Massachusetts - overgrown with weeds, gravestones tilted and broken, names nearly lost to time. These were not just graves; they were markers of once-important lives: war heroes, missionaries, community leaders. Their stories were slowly being erased by silence and weather.
As I read that account, I couldn't help but think about the legacy software projects we leave behind. Old QA test plans. Automation scripts written two frameworks ago. Bug reports from a bygone ticketing system. They sit untouched, unmaintained, sometimes even mocked. But once, they mattered. Once, they saved releases and caught serious issues.
The QA Graveyard We Never Visit
Every team has one. A folder labeled /Old_Tests, a spreadsheet named Final_Regression_v4_REAL.xlsx, a Selenium suite collecting digital dust. Like the cemetery, these artifacts were created with intention and purpose - but with time, people move on, teams shift, and documentation dies.
And here's the problem: modern development moves fast, but it forgets faster. When you ignore the past, you risk repeating it.
Replace "soldiers" with "test cases" and you have the average sprint retrospective.
Every Test Tells a Story
That old cemetery contained the tomb of Gen. William Hull, once a national figure, now nearly erased. Similarly, your test repository contains relics of critical bugs that once halted production. Do you know why that weird test named LoginTest_AltFlow2() exists? Someone fought a battle with a bug once. That test was their monument.
Before you delete, investigate. Archive meaningfully. Annotate the history. QA Engineers aren't just testers - we're historians, preserving institutional knowledge so others don't trip on the same broken code.
Be the Missionary for Modern Quality
The cemetery article also referenced John Eliot, a missionary who translated the Bible into the native Massachusett language. His grave was overgrown, but his impact remained. In QA, we too are missionaries - promoting best practices, accessibility, user empathy, and automation excellence in places that don't always prioritize them.
Let your work outlive your tenure. Leave behind traceable, reusable test cases. Mentor others. Push for quality when the focus is only on features.
The Cost of Forgetting
One haunting line from the article: "The old churchyard has dropped into oblivion… its sacred soil trodden underfoot by modern progress." That's what happens when we skip retrospectives, push to production without regression, and abandon quality documentation. We tread on old lessons, and sometimes, the same defects rise from the dead.
"Software dies in silence - not because it broke, but because no one remembers how it worked."
Modern QA Must Remember
Don't let your QA legacy be an abandoned plot in the development cemetery. Take time to revisit old tests. Annotate your automation code. Keep a changelog of "why" a test was written, not just "what" it tests. Create wikis. Leave footprints.
Your test scripts may not have marble tombstones, but they deserve respect. They caught bugs. They saved time. They told a story.