Certified Backstage Associate (CBA) Roadmap

Understand the product before memorizing commands. Backstage is an open source framework for developer portals, not a preconfigured universal platform.

• Explain Software Catalog, Software Templates, TechDocs, Search, and plugin extensibility
• Meet current OS, Node.js, Yarn, Docker, Git, disk, memory, and port prerequisites
• Create an app through the official create-app workflow
• Map app-config.yaml, catalog-info.yaml, root package.json, and Yarn workspaces
• Distinguish packages/app from packages/backend
• Install dependencies in the owning workspace and review lockfile and peer changes
• Run frontend and backend locally; correlate browser requests with server logs
• Compile TypeScript and separate type, lint, test, build, and runtime failures

Move from a local evaluation to an architecture that makes environment, persistence, and trust boundaries explicit.

• Trace frontend, backend plugins, core services, and plugin-isolated databases
• Use app-config base, local, environment, command-line, environment-variable, and file-backed layers appropriately
• Define configuration schemas and verify frontend visibility never exposes secrets
• Run config checks and preserve effective versioned non-secret settings
• Understand why local SQLite is not the production recommendation and use PostgreSQL in the project
• Build a minimal container image with a restricted context and external runtime config
• Plan health, readiness, logs, cache, database migration, scaling, backup, and recovery
• Deploy in the same controlled pattern used for other software in the organization

Model discoverable software and ownership without confusing descriptive metadata with runtime authority.

• Author apiVersion, kind, metadata, and kind-specific spec correctly
• Use Component, API, Resource, System, Domain, Group, User, Template, and Location intentionally
• Apply names, namespaces, types, lifecycle, owner, tags, links, and annotations
• Model provided and consumed APIs, dependencies, systems, domains, and organizational relationships
• Use string entity references instead of unstable UIDs
• Keep relations and status out of input descriptors because processors derive them
• Update owner-maintained metadata through normal source-control workflows

Follow an entity from an authoritative source to the final API and make asynchronous errors visible.

• Compare manual registration, static locations, Software Templates, and external integrations
• Use entity providers for scheduled or event-driven authoritative synchronization
• Use processors for validation, enrichment, transformation, locations, and emitted children
• Trace ingestion, processing, relations, errors, and stitching
• Understand provider buckets, eager deletion, processing edges, orphaning, and explicit deletion
• Use entity status, catalog events, logs, and unprocessed-entity tools to diagnose failures
• Test malformed YAML, missing sources, duplicate provider ownership, invalid references, and stale entities

Focus most final preparation on Customizing Backstage, the largest domain.

• Distinguish core, app, plugins, frontend extensions, backend plugins, modules, services, and extension points
• Use TypeScript, React, supported Material UI components, and the Backstage design system
• Compose the app through extension trees, overrides, Utility APIs, and route bindings
• Keep private service calls and credentials in authenticated backend plugins or controlled proxies
• Avoid imports from other plugins' internal packages; use public contracts
• Integrate features into catalog entity pages using stable references
• Handle loading, empty, error, denied, stale, timeout, and success states accessibly
• Test light/dark contrast, focus, keyboard, zoom, responsive, and reduced-motion behavior
• Complete 50 questions, 40 flashcards, and all three projects before the final official-source review