Fundamentals of Software Quality Assurance

Begin your journey toward becoming a professional Software Quality Assurance (SQA) Engineer with this practical, beginner-friendly course.

Fundamentals of Software Quality Assurance introduces you to the essential concepts, processes, and responsibilities used by real QA teams. Whether you are a student, recent graduate, career changer, or job seeker, this course will help you build a strong foundation in manual software testing and understand how quality assurance fits into the software development process.

You will begin by learning the differences between Quality Assurance, Quality Control, and software testing. You will then explore the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC), including requirement analysis, test planning, test-case design, test execution, defect tracking, reporting, and test closure.

The course explains important testing types, including functional and non-functional testing, smoke testing, sanity testing, regression testing, retesting, user-interface testing, compatibility testing, and User Acceptance Testing (UAT).

You will also learn how to write positive and negative test cases and apply widely used black-box testing techniques, including:

• Boundary Value Analysis

• Equivalence Partitioning

• Decision Table Testing

• State Transition Testing

• Error Guessing

• Exploratory Testing

In addition, you will understand defect severity and priority, how developers handle reported bugs, and how to capture clear defect evidence. The course also introduces Agile and Scrum practices, QA documentation, reporting, and the basics of Jira for bug tracking.

Real-world examples will show you how QA Engineers approach new features, manage testing activities, communicate findings, and contribute throughout a software project. You will also explore a typical day in the life of a QA Engineer.

Finally, the course includes practical interview scenarios, commonly asked QA questions, job-preparation guidance, and recommended next steps for continuing your career development.

No professional QA experience is required. Basic computer knowledge, attention to detail, analytical thinking, and a willingness to learn are enough to get started.