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Quiz

2627 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 areas2627 Architecture Fundamentals81 Distributed Systems101 Data Architecture90 Cloud Architecture77 Networking86 API & Integration Architecture78 Reliability & Resilience88 Observability81 Performance & Capacity Engineering90 Security Architecture85 Cost Architecture & FinOps82 Business Architecture93 Architecture Communication91 Enterprise Architecture91 Legacy Modernization82 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

4 questions in Meta-Skills.

  1. Constraint Thinking beginner

    A pipeline has four stages. Three run at about 30% utilisation and one runs at 95%. The team adds capacity to all four. Throughput barely moves. Why?

    2 min answer constraintsthroughputbottleneckqueueing
  2. Constraint Thinking beginner Multiple choice

    A team must ship a compliance-driven reporting system by a fixed statutory date nine months away. There are three engineers, no operations staff, an existing Postgres database, and no budget for new licences. Which constraint should drive the architecture?

    3 min answer constraintsoperabilityteam-sizeprioritisation
  3. First-Principles Reasoning beginner

    A product manager asks for a 25 ms round-trip response time for users in London talking to a service in New York, arguing that a faster network provider would deliver it. Roughly what is the physical floor, and what does the answer let you do?

    3 min answer latencyphysicsfirst-principlesestimation
  4. 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