01 What Is Software Testing?
Testing is not about executing test cases — it's how a team answers whether a product will actually work for its users. The foundational definitions everything else in this path builds on.
02 The Role of QA in Product Delivery
What a QA engineer actually owns on a team, how the role differs from developers and DevOps, and when QA should get involved in delivery.
03 Software Testing Principles
Seven foundational principles that shape how experienced testers think — not rules to memorize, but the mental model everything later in this path builds on.
04 Testing Across the SDLC
How testing maps onto different software development lifecycle models, and the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) that runs inside every one of them.
05 Agile & Scrum Basics for QA
How QA actually participates in Scrum — not just testing at the end of a sprint, but shaping stories, estimates, and Definition of Done from day one.
06 Verification vs. Validation
Why 'we built it right' and 'we built the right thing' are two different questions, and how confusing them lets a correctly-built wrong feature reach production.
07 Static vs. Dynamic Testing
The technique-level distinction behind verification and validation: catching defects by reviewing artifacts without running code, versus catching them by executing the software.
08 Risk-Based Testing Fundamentals
How to decide what to test when there isn't time to test everything, using probability and impact to prioritize effort deliberately.
09 Quality Attributes
Why 'does it work' is only one dimension of quality, and how to weigh functionality, performance, security, usability, reliability, and maintainability for a given feature.
10 Shift-Left & Shift-Right Testing
Why modern QA doesn't wait for a finished build to start testing, and doesn't stop caring once one ships — moving quality work earlier and extending it into production.
11 Defect Life Cycle
The stages a defect moves through from discovery to closure, and why a team without a real defect workflow loses track of what's actually fixed.
12 Severity vs. Priority
Two questions that get asked about every defect — how bad is it, and how soon should it be fixed — and why confusing them leads teams to fix the wrong things first.
13 Test Strategy vs. Test Plan
One document says how a team approaches testing in general; the other says how testing will actually happen for this release. Confusing them leaves teams without either.
14 QA Metrics & Measurement
How QA work actually gets evaluated — the metrics that prove testing effectiveness, and the vanity numbers that only look like progress.
15 Common QA Terminology
A consolidated glossary of every term introduced across the Foundations path — organized by category, meant to be bookmarked and searched, not read start to finish.
16 QA Career Roadmap
What actually changes between Junior QA and QA Lead, the specialization paths (SDET, automation, quality engineering), and how to plan the move to each.
17 Testing Myths & Misconceptions
The capstone of Foundations — seven widely-believed myths about QA, debunked using the concepts taught throughout this path, each with a real-world story and an interview angle.