Specialised Testing

NZ Gov (AoG) Standards

The differentiator. Web Accessibility Standard 1.2 (WCAG 2.2 AA), Web Usability 1.4, Digital Service Design, NZISM — taught in an AI-assisted context.

Cited at: every NZ government interview

Performance Testing

Load, stress, scalability, and soak testing. Learn how systems behave under pressure — and how to prove it with numbers.

Tools: JMeter, Gatling, k6, LoadRunner

Security Testing

Find vulnerabilities before attackers do. SQL injection, XSS, auth flaws, NZISM controls, plus hands-on labs (Juice Shop, DVWA, PortSwigger).

Tools: OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite, Kali, SQLMap

Privacy Testing

Test for NZ Privacy Act 2020 compliance: the 13 IPPs, IPP 3A indirect-collection notices (May 2026), data minimisation, PIAs, breach detection.

Focus: OPC, PIA, IPP checks

Accessibility Testing

WCAG compliance, screen reader testing, keyboard navigation, colour contrast. Make software work for everyone in Aotearoa.

Tools: axe, WAVE, Lighthouse, NVDA

API Testing

Test REST, GraphQL, and SOAP interfaces independently of the UI. Faster, more stable, and essential for microservices.

Tools: Postman, REST Assured, Karate

Usability Testing

Evaluate ease of use with real users. Sessions, surveys, heatmaps, and A/B testing. Turn intuition into evidence.

Methods: moderated sessions, SUS, heuristic eval

Compatibility Testing

Browser, OS, device, and backward compatibility. Ensure your product works everywhere your users actually are.

Tools: BrowserStack, Sauce Labs, VMs

Mobile Application Testing

Device fragmentation, gestures, battery, offline mode, interruptions, app store compliance, NZ carriers and EMAs. iOS and Android deep-dive.

Tools: Appium, Espresso, XCUITest, Detox

Chaos Testing

Break production on purpose, in controlled conditions. Principles of Chaos, game days, blast radius, steady-state metrics.

Tools: Chaos Monkey, Gremlin, Litmus, AWS FIS, Toxiproxy

Test with AI

Use generative AI to supercharge test analysis, design, regression, and triage. Prompt engineering, risk management, and live LLM exercises — mapped to ISTQB CT-GenAI.

ISTQB CT-GenAI

Jira Xray Test Management

Build audit-grade test evidence: Xray test cases, test plans, test cycles, traceability matrix, and requirements coverage reports that survive PIRs and regulatory audits.

ISTQB CTAL-TM · Audit-ready evidence

GitHub Actions for QA

Build quality gates in CI: test workflows, browser matrix strategies, result publishing, branch protection rules, and reusable workflow patterns for NZ teams.

ISTQB CT-TAS · Playwright CI integration

Event-Driven & Async Testing

Test Kafka pipelines end-to-end: producer, consumer, schema registry, dead letter queues, poison pills, saga testing, and AsyncAPI contracts for fintech and healthtech.

ISTQB CTAL-TA · Testcontainers · Avro

Banking & Payments QA

Core banking, payments rails, Open Banking APIs, PCI-DSS, and AML/CFT — in NZ context. 5 lessons.

Healthcare & PHI QA

Clinical-system safety, HL7/FHIR interoperability, PHI under the Health Information Privacy Code, and EHR integration. 5 lessons.

Insurance QA

Policy administration, claims, underwriting and rating engines, conduct testing, and renewal integrity. 5 lessons.

Database & Backend Testing

SQL for testers, referential integrity, migration and schema-change testing, and test-data masking. 4 lessons.

Security Labs — Spot the Vuln

Hands-on: read code to find injection, broken auth/access control, and misconfigurations — then fix them. 3 lessons.

BDD & Three Amigos

Turn ambiguous user stories into shared examples and clean Gherkin. Shift-left collaboration. 2 lessons.

Bug Reporting & Evidence

Write reports developers act on — isolation, repro, and reading logs/console/network as evidence. 2 lessons.

DevOps QA

Container/Kubernetes testing, feature flags & progressive delivery, and canary/blue-green validation. 3 lessons.

Network & Resilience

Testing under throttled/offline conditions, flaky-API resilience, and state/caching defects. 3 lessons.

Accessibility Labs (WCAG 2.2)

Hands-on WCAG 2.2: testing against criteria, keyboard-only navigation, and screen-reader testing. 3 lessons.

NZ Compliance & Te Tiriti

Te Tiriti o Waitangi & Māori data sovereignty in testing, HISF, and privacy in test environments. 3 lessons.

Test Estimation & Planning

Estimation techniques, risk-based prioritisation, and fit-for-purpose test strategy. 3 lessons.

ERP Programme Testing

Oracle Fusion, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Salesforce — the platforms dominating NZ enterprise and government procurement. Configuration testing, data migration, and UAT coordination. 7 lessons.

Playwright Deep-Dive

From playwright.config.ts to production CI pipelines. Advanced network interception, browser contexts, component testing, and GitHub Actions sharding. 4 lessons.

Environment & Release Management

Environment topology, promotion pipelines, release gates, Go/No-Go decisions, and test data governance under the NZ Privacy Act 2020. 3 lessons.

QA Career & Job Search Toolkit

NZ salary benchmarks, CV and portfolio, interview preparation, and the contracting vs permanent decision. 4 lessons.

Accessibility Certification (IAAP)

CPACC and WAS exam preparation with NZ legislative context — the Web Accessibility Standard 1.2, Human Rights Act, and WCAG 2.2 AA. 3 lessons.

Shift-Left & Shift-Right Testing

Test earlier in requirements and design. Test later with feature flags, canary deployments, and production monitoring. Continuous testing end-to-end. 3 lessons.

GraphQL API Testing

Schema validation, field-level authorisation, introspection control, query depth limits, and why REST testing approaches break on GraphQL.

OAuth / SSO / MFA Testing

OAuth state validation, token expiry, refresh token rotation, MFA bypass testing, JWT claim verification. RealMe and Azure AD examples.

Contract Testing (PACT)

Consumer-driven contracts for microservices. Write consumer tests, verify providers, and use can-i-deploy to gate releases. 3 lessons.

Te Reo Māori UI Testing

Macron rendering across every output channel — browser, PDF, email, SMS, CSV. Character encoding, language switching, and search normalisation.

Bridge Exercises

Cross-track scenarios that combine manual and automation skills: Junior → SDET, Mid-Level → Senior, Senior → Test Lead.

BBST — Black Box Software Testing

Kaner, Bach & Pettichord's framework for testing as a rigorous intellectual discipline — oracles, heuristics, cognitive discipline. 2 lessons.

QA Apprenticeship Coming soon

A 7-week simulated job on one NZ app: requirements → defects → release call → incident review.