Quiz

2667 questions of the kind that actually get asked — in interviews, in architecture review boards, and by the person who has to run the thing at 3 AM. Every answer states the trade-off rather than the slogan, and says when the obvious choice is the wrong one.

All areas2667 Architecture Fundamentals81 Distributed Systems101 Data Architecture90 Cloud Architecture87 Networking86 API & Integration Architecture78 Reliability & Resilience88 Observability81 Performance & Capacity Engineering90 Security Architecture95 Cost Architecture & FinOps92 Business Architecture93 Architecture Communication91 Enterprise Architecture91 Legacy Modernization92 AI-Era Architecture86 Software Architecture & Engineering84 Architecture Patterns84 Architecture Decision-Making91 The Architect's Meta-Skills92 Delivery & Release Engineering93 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience92 Testing & Quality Architecture90 Data Platform Architecture88 Streaming & Real-Time Data93 Data Governance & Semantics81 Frontend & Experience Architecture91 Edge, Mobile & IoT88 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture90 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk88

Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

56 questions in Legacy Modernization.

Quiz

Most large modernisation programmes are late, over budget, or abandoned. What are the recurring structural causes, rather than the project-management ones?

TSB's 2018 core banking migration moved 1.9 million customers in a single weekend and failed publicly. What would you have required before approving that cutover?

A core system is reliable, undocumented and staffed by people close to retirement. What do you do first?

An organisation must modernise a mainframe system running critical batch processes. What makes this harder than typical modernisation, and what approaches exist?

Customer balances are served from a change-data-capture copy of a mainframe rather than from the mainframe itself. What happens, hour by hour, on the night the month-end close posts a large batch and the capture stream falls forty minutes behind?

You must modernise a mainframe application with no documentation and one remaining expert who retires in nine months. Where do you start?

A logistics platform is migrating a system that coordinates live vehicle dispatch. What controls reduce migration risk when the operation cannot pause?

A platform is migrating a live service and must manage risk. Which risks dominate, and which controls actually reduce them?

Ant Group moved Alipay's core transaction data off a commercial relational database onto OceanBase, its own distributed database, beginning with a 1% slice in 2014 and reaching full replacement in 2019. What risk control is that ramp actually providing, and where would copying it be a mistake?

Make the case for modernising a system that works reliably and is expensive to change.

You need funding for eighteen months of platform work with no customer-visible features. How do you build the case?