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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

130 questions.

  1. Platform APIs beginner

    A platform team argues that their internal API needs no versioning because every caller is inside the company and can be found with a code search. What is wrong with that reasoning?

    2 min answer internal apiversioningcouplingdeployment
  2. Platform Engineering beginner Multiple choice

    A platform injects a log-shipping sidecar with a 128 MiB limit into every pod. During an evening peak the sidecar's in-memory buffer grows faster than it can flush, the pod exceeds its limit, the kubelet kills the container and a product team's checkout service drops requests for eleven minutes. Whose reliability budget is spent and what does that imply about how the platform ships that sidecar?

    3 min answer sidecarownershipon-callresource limits
  3. Platform Team Topologies beginner Multiple choice

    Six platform engineers support forty product teams. Each team raises roughly 1.5 requests a week and each request costs about 90 minutes of an engineer's time once the context switch is counted. Roughly how much of the team's capacity is interrupt work and what does that number rule in or out?

    2 min answer platform teaminterruptscapacityteam topologies
  4. Portfolio Prioritisation beginner

    A quarterly plan allocates 100% of engineering capacity to roadmap features. The rationale is that maintenance work can be picked up as it arises. Review the plan.

    2 min answer capacity planningmaintenancedependency currencyprioritisation
  5. Presentation Skills beginner Multiple choice

    Four minutes into a twenty-minute architecture slot a stakeholder asks a question that belongs on slide 14 and the discussion runs for eight minutes. You now have eight minutes and fourteen slides. What do you do?

    3 min answer presentationtime managementdecisionaudience
  6. Presentation Skills beginner

    You have to present the same architecture to the board on Tuesday and to the engineering teams on Wednesday. How do the two differ?

    1 min answer communicationdiagramsaudience
  7. Prioritisation beginner

    An architecture improvement backlog has 14 items and capacity for three this quarter. Why does scoring the items fail to prevent the same argument next quarter, and what should sit beside each item instead?

    3 min answer prioritisationbacklogtriggersdecision-rules
  8. Privacy by Design beginner Multiple choice

    A food-delivery app of Zomato's shape must refuse alcohol orders to under-18s. The sign-up form asks for a full date of birth and the team is about to store it on the user row alongside the address. What should the account record hold instead, and what does the full date of birth cost you later?

    3 min answer data-minimisationderived-attributesgdpr-article-25age-verification
  9. Product Thinking beginner

    A grocery-delivery product in the mould of Instacart wants to replace "we will message you if an item is out of stock" with "we substitute automatically and you are never charged more". The product manager calls it a copy change. What has the business bought and what has it just agreed to pay for?

    3 min answer product thinkingpromisessubstitutionspricing
  10. Product Thinking beginner

    An internal tool's users are required to use it. Which product signals still mean something, and which are worthless?

    2 min answer internal productsmeasurementadoptioncaptive users
  11. Quality Attributes beginner

    A developer-tools team writes "the workspace must be fast and reliable" into a design document. What is wrong with that, and what should it say instead?

    1 min answer quality-attributespostmanscenariostestability
  12. Real User Monitoring beginner

    Interaction to Next Paint replaced First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital on 12 March 2024. A site that passed FID comfortably can fail INP badly. What did FID measure, what does INP measure, and why does the change match user complaints better?

    3 min answer inpfidcore-web-vitalsrum