From tester to QA engineer: SDLC, test lifecycle, bug reports, DevTools, API testing, and smoke testing — 100 challenges to build your foundation.
Everything you need to become a professional QA engineer, built from the ground up. Start with the economics of quality (why finding bugs early saves 100×), move through the software development and test lifecycles, learn to write bug reports that developers actually act on, master browser DevTools as your primary investigation tool, test APIs directly without a UI, design test cases using proven techniques, and set up smoke tests that guard every deployment. Every module has real tools, real code, and a project that goes in your portfolio.
Built by Lakshya Kumar
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Sign in to applyComplete all modules, then submit the required number of capstone projects. Each must earn a passing rating from an admin reviewer.
Pick any public web application (a open-source project, a demo app, or a real app you use). Write a test plan covering the 3 most critical user journeys. Design 40+ test cases using equivalence partitioning and boundary value analysis. Execute them manually and log all defects as proper bug reports. Export a HAR file from your most complex test and annotate the key API calls. Write a 1-page test summary report with pass rate, defect density, and a release recommendation (ship / ship with known issues / do not ship).
I'm considering a 'QA Fundamentals' course. It covers: the cost-of-bugs argument for QA, SDLC models (waterfall/agile/DevOps) and where QA fits, the test lifecycle (STLC), types of testing (unit/integration/smoke/regression/exploratory/UAT/performance/security), writing great bug reports (title/steps/severity/priority), browser DevTools mastery (Network tab, Application tab, Console), API testing with curl and Postman, smoke testing after deploys, test case design techniques (equivalence partitioning, BVA, decision tables), and QA metrics. 100 challenges, capstone is a full QA cycle on a real app. Context about me: 1. My current role: [e.g. "developer curious about QA", "non-technical tester wanting to level up", "recent bootcamp grad, never done QA", "PM who wants to understand QA better"] 2. What I can do now in testing: [e.g. "nothing formal", "I click through the app to check it works", "I write some manual test cases", "I can write basic Postman requests"] 3. What I want to be able to do after: [e.g. "get a junior QA job", "contribute to testing on my dev team", "set up a QA process at my startup", "become a QA lead"] Answer: - For my background, which 2 modules will give me the highest leverage in the next 3 months? - A concrete artifact I'd build that I could show in a QA job interview. - Is this course right for me, or should I start somewhere shorter? - What will I NOT be able to do after — e.g. "write automated tests", "test mobile apps at scale", "perform penetration testing"?
The definitive resource on exploratory testing from its primary advocate.