development lifecycles Questions

I am new to testing and my mentor at the company is asking me to get my base strong with regards to manual testing. I know java and made few demo projects with selenium - browser automation and rest assured - API testing . They are expecting me to have better test cases coverage and base needs to be strong . So , anybody knows few blogs/resources from which I can get my foundation strong?

I'm currently building out a Test PMO for an insurance company. We have a long term, fixed-price contract with a vendor using a waterfall model.  I'm currently working on KPIs and metrics which I will use to tell the testing story, which means both technical and business comsumers will need to find value in them. I'm conducting targeted interviews atm  but am interested in hearing if any of you have had experience in this arena.  

What kinds KPIs / metrics have you found valuable?

What kinds of chatring / mapping have you found to be confusing?

What considerations would you want to address?

Any additional comments?

In the company where I work there are 3 products: software, application and site - each with a different QA process. The question is how would you suggest integrating the QA process in different scenarios? Because there are tasks in which the QA man checks the task and there are those who "created" the task and checked whether it was indeed done at his request.  

I look forward to your comments on this subject.  

Thanks!

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