DEV-304 Development

Test Strategy & Quality Engineering Leadership

Design a test strategy you can defend to both engineers and executives, with evidence rather than ceremony. Learners argue the pyramid honestly for their own architecture, allocate coverage by risk, build quality gates that catch real defects instead of performing diligence, and turn defect data into decisions. The outcome is a written strategy covering layers, environments, data, gates and reporting for the learner organisation.

B4Professional

6modules

42skill atoms

2role journeys

Curriculum

What this course covers.

6 modules, 42 named skill atoms. Expand any module to see them.

1The Pyramid, Argued Honestly7 skill atoms

unit integration and e2e cost curvestesting trophy vs pyramid debatewhere the pyramid misleads in microservicescontract tests replacing broad e2ewho owns which layerdeveloper-written unit tests as the normrebalancing an inverted suite

2Risk-Based Coverage7 skill atoms

impact and likelihood scoringrevenue and safety critical pathscoverage percentage as a lagging proxymutation score as a real quality signalchange-risk heatmapsexploratory charters for unknown unknownsdeciding explicitly what not to test

3Quality Gates Without Theatre7 skill atoms

gating on signal not vanity metricsblocking vs advisory checksflake budget before a gate may blocksign-off ceremonies producing no evidencegate bypass audit traillead-time cost of each gateretiring gates that never catch anything

4Environments & Test Data Strategy7 skill atoms

ephemeral vs shared environmentsproduction-like data volumesmasking and synthetic generationPII and GDPR constraints on test dataseeded deterministic datasetsenvironment drift detectioncontention for a scarce environment

5Defect Analytics, Shift-Left & Reporting7 skill atoms

escaped defect ratedefect origin and injection-phase analysisreopen rate and root-cause classesMTTD and MTTR for quality incidentsshift-left as enablement not handofftest-design coaching and pairingone-page quality view for executives

6Quality Strategy in the AI Era7 skill atoms

generated tests inflating counts not coveragereviewing an assistant-written suiteassertion quality auditsflakiness introduced by generated selectorsgenerated volume outrunning review capacitymetrics for AI-authored changepolicy for AI-authored tests inside the gate

Where it fits

DEV-304 in the role journeys.

This course appears in 2 of our 45 role journeys. Here is what a learner takes immediately before and after it in each.

Engineering Manager

Professional stage

AI-112→DEV-304→AI-511

QA / Test Engineer (AI-era)

Professional stage

CL-403→DEV-304→DEV-402

Roles this course serves

Engineering Manager QA / Test Engineer (AI-era)

The capability ladder

This course is authored to band B4.

Every course we run is written to one rung of the CASI ladder, so a plan can be assembled to take a team from where they are to where they need to be.

What do B1–B6 mean?The CASI Capability Ladder — click to expand

Every course targets a band on the CASI Capability Ladder — our six-band proficiency scale, anchored to open standards (O*NET, ESCO, NICE, NIST AI RMF, Bloom's). A band tells you how deep a course goes, and what evidence proves it.

What the learner can doTypical evidence

AwareUnderstands concepts and vocabulary; uses tools with guidance

Knowledge checks

FoundationPerforms standard tasks correctly in familiar contexts

Guided labs, autograded exercises

PractitionerDelivers complete pieces of work independently

Scenario labs, proctored hands-on exams

ProfessionalHandles production-grade complexity, trade-offs and failure modes

Break-fix drills, design defenses

AdvancedEngineers systems end-to-end under constraints; leads others

Rubric-scored capstones, vivas

ExpertSets direction; recognised authority across teams

Portfolio + panel evaluation

A note on B6. Courses in this catalog target B1–B5. B6 is not taught — it is recognised, through a portfolio and a panel, once someone is setting direction for others. Every journey here is built to land a learner at B5.

Other Development courses at this level.

DEV-202

Run DEV-304 for your team.

This course runs at several lengths depending on how deep you need to go and how much of it your people already have. Tell us who is being trained and we will scope it.

Add it to a training plan Talk to our team Check your team’s level free

Test Strategy & Quality Engineering Leadership

What this course covers.

DEV-304 in the role journeys.

Engineering Manager

QA / Test Engineer (AI-era)

Roles this course serves

This course is authored to band B4.

Other Development courses at this level.

Advanced Java: Concurrency, JVM & Performance

Java Microservices with Spring Cloud

Software Architecture & Design Patterns

Advanced React & Frontend Architecture

Node.js Backend Engineering at Scale

Mobile Release Engineering & Store Operations

Run DEV-304 for your team.