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RizTech Academy

QA & Test Automation

Become the person who ships confidence — manual and automated testing for web and mobile apps and the APIs behind them.

QA is one of the most common ways into the software industry, and one of the most valuable roles on a team — the person who finds the problem before the customer does. This course is for someone whose job is testing, not a developer writing tests for their own code.

It covers both halves of the discipline: manual testing done properly (test design, exploratory testing, bug reports that actually get fixed) and automation done honestly (Playwright for web, Appium for mobile, API automation, run in CI). And it treats web and mobile as equal partners: real products are a mix — operational web dashboards and admin consoles alongside mobile apps, both talking to the same APIs — so you learn to test web apps (cross-browser, responsive, data-heavy dashboards) and mobile apps (devices, connectivity, transaction flows) with the same seriousness, plus the APIs that sit behind both.

The theme running through the automation half is blunt and important: a test suite nobody trusts is worse than none, because people start ignoring red builds. You will learn to write tests that stay green because they should, and go red only when something is actually broken.

Who this is for

  • Anyone starting a career in QA or software testing
  • Interns joining a QA or quality team
  • Developers who want to test web, mobile and API products properly

What you need first

  • Comfort using a computer, a browser, and reading (no prior coding required for the manual half)
  • Basic programming helps for the automation half — a little JavaScript or Python; the Web UI or a foundation course covers it
  • Familiarity with using web and mobile apps

Tools you will use

PlaywrightAppiumPostmanJavaScript / TypeScriptDockerGitHub Actions

By the end you can

  • Explain what QA is for and derive thorough test cases from a requirement
  • Write test plans, run exploratory sessions, and file bug reports that get fixed
  • Test web apps properly — cross-browser, responsive layouts, and data-heavy dashboards, forms and reports
  • Test mobile apps properly — device fragmentation, low connectivity, permissions, and transaction flows
  • Test APIs manually with Postman and understand status codes, contracts and edge cases
  • Decide when to automate and when not to, and why most UI suites rot
  • Automate web UI with Playwright and mobile with Appium, with stable, trustworthy tests
  • Automate API tests and test at the right layer of the pyramid
  • Run a suite in CI with actionable reporting, and work well with developers
Reference code

Stuck? Compare your work

AgentPay — the mobile-money agent platform this course tests against: a Fastify API and a React operations dashboard, with API tests (Vitest) and end-to-end tests (Playwright). The automation modules and the capstone build their tests against it.

It is there for when you are stuck, not to start from. Type the code yourself first — copying it will teach you very little.

View on GitHub
Syllabus

12 modules, 56 lessons

Work through these in order. Each lesson is short enough to finish in one sitting and ends with something to build, not a quiz.

  1. 1

    What QA Really Is

    What testing is for, what a QA does day to day, and the mindset that finds bugs.

    1. What testing is for, and what a QA actually does25 min
    2. Quality, and the cost of a bug found late25 min
    3. Test levels and types: unit to acceptance, functional to non-functional30 min
    4. The QA mindset: thinking like a user and an adversary25 min
  2. 2

    Manual Testing in Practice

    The core craft: designing test cases, exploring, and reporting bugs that get fixed.

    1. Reading a requirement and deriving test cases30 min
    2. Test design: equivalence partitioning and boundary values30 min
    3. Test plans and coverage30 min
    4. Exploratory testing, done with a charter30 min
    5. Writing a bug report that gets fixed, not closed as "cannot reproduce"30 min
    6. Severity vs priority, and regression testing30 min
  3. 3

    Testing Web Apps

    Where web apps and operational dashboards actually break: browsers, layouts, and data-heavy screens.

    1. What is different about testing a web app30 min
    2. Cross-browser testing, and why browsers differ30 min
    3. Responsive layouts, screen sizes and rendering30 min
    4. Data-heavy screens: dashboards, tables, filters, forms and reports35 min
    5. Browser behaviours: back, refresh, tabs, sessions and dev tools30 min
  4. 4

    Testing Mobile Apps

    Where mobile-first products actually break: devices, connectivity, permissions, and money.

    1. Device fragmentation: OS versions, screens, mid-range Androids30 min
    2. Low connectivity, flaky networks and offline behaviour35 min
    3. Permissions, interrupts, backgrounding and battery30 min
    4. Fresh installs, upgrades and data migration25 min
    5. Testing money and transaction flows: double-charge, retries, reconciliation40 min
  5. 5

    API Testing

    Testing the backend directly — faster, more precise, and where much of the logic lives.

    1. HTTP for testers: requests, responses and status codes30 min
    2. Manual API testing with Postman35 min
    3. Designing API test cases: positive, negative, edge30 min
    4. Contracts, schemas and validating responses30 min
  6. 6

    Automation: When, Why, and the Pyramid

    The judgement that makes automation pay off — and the honesty that keeps a suite trusted.

    1. When to automate, and when not to30 min
    2. The test pyramid, and why most UI suites rot30 min
    3. Flaky tests destroy trust — the most important lesson30 min
    4. Choosing what to automate first25 min
  7. 7

    Web Automation with Playwright

    Automating the browser with tests that are stable because they should be.

    1. Playwright: setup and your first test30 min
    2. Locators: finding elements the robust way30 min
    3. Actions and web-first assertions, and why you never sleep()35 min
    4. Page objects and keeping tests maintainable35 min
    5. Fixtures, setup and test data30 min
    6. Traces, screenshots and debugging a failure30 min
  8. 8

    API Automation

    Fast, stable tests against the backend — and setting up state the quick way.

    1. Automating API tests in code30 min
    2. Asserting status, body and schema30 min
    3. Auth, and arranging state through the API30 min
    4. Testing at the right layer: API vs UI25 min
  9. 9

    Mobile Automation with Appium

    Automating native mobile apps — and the honest reality of mobile automation.

    1. What Appium is, and how it works30 min
    2. Your first mobile test35 min
    3. Mobile locators and gestures30 min
    4. Android and iOS under one API30 min
    5. The reality of mobile automation: flakiness, device farms, when it is worth it30 min
  10. 10

    CI, Environments and Trust

    Running the suite on every change, with reporting that makes failures actionable.

    1. Running the suite in CI on every change35 min
    2. Reporting so a failure is actionable30 min
    3. Test environments and data, with Docker30 min
    4. Maintaining a suite people trust25 min
  11. 11

    Working as a QA

    The professional habits that make a tester valuable, not just busy.

    1. Working with developers without the adversarial relationship25 min
    2. Risk-based testing: you cannot test everything30 min
    3. Test metrics that matter, and vanity metrics that do not25 min
    4. Growing as a QA: manual to automation to SDET25 min
  12. 12

    Capstone: QA an App End to End

    Test a real mobile-money-style app across every surface — manual, API, web and mobile, in CI.

    1. The brief: QA the AgentPay app25 min
    2. A test plan, exploratory session and bug reports45 min
    3. Automating the API tests45 min
    4. Automating the web UI with Playwright45 min
    5. Mobile tests, and running the whole suite in CI45 min
Previous courseAWS DevOps in Practice

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