Chapter Ten · The Specialist Fields
Beyond Functional: the Specialist Fields
The four non-functional worlds every QA engineer is expected to converse in, even without specializing: performance (will the sale kill us?), security (what can someone hostile do?), usability and accessibility (can all people actually use it?), and mobile (the hostile physical world). Each an overview, not a deep dive — the vocabulary, the core questions, one tool-free skill you can use tomorrow, and an honest line where the specialist takes over.
The course's Chapter 3 split — functional versus non-functional — comes due here. Chapters 4 through 9 were overwhelmingly functional: does the system do what it should? This chapter is the "-ilities": how fast, how secure, how usable, how it survives a phone. These are specialist careers, and the goal for you is deliberately calibrated — conversational fluency, not mastery. Spot the missing requirement, ask for the right test, read the specialist's chart, know where your contribution ends. That's what a junior generalist is expected to bring.
Four topics, four "-ilities". Performance — load/stress/spike/soak, why averages lie, and the sale that ran quiet this year. Security — the attacker's question, the three concept-level classics, and FW-411 found with a URL edit. Usability and accessibility — task success over taste, the POUR principles, and the keyboard tour that caught FW-418. And mobile — the four hostile-world families, the store-gate severity twist, and FW-425's interrupted-payment double charge.