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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

42 questions in Architecture Decision-Making.

  1. Decision Practice intermediate

    A large organisation wants consistent architectural decision practice across many teams. What should be standardised and what should not?

    2 min answer decision-practicestandardisationautonomygovernance
  2. Decision Practice intermediate

    You join a team with no decision records. Significant choices are made in chat and nobody can explain why the system is shaped as it is. How do you introduce ADRs without it becoming process overhead?

    2 min answer adrdocumentationpracticeadoption
  3. Delivery vs Maintainability intermediate

    A quick-commerce grocery operator running dark stores needs substitution handling for out-of-stock items. Option A is a rule table inside the existing order service: three weeks and it will need rework. Option B is a separate availability-and-substitution service with its own store: eleven weeks. The business does 45000 orders a day, cancels about 6% of them for stock reasons, expects the feature to recover roughly a third of those, and earns about 1.10 dollars of contribution per order. Roughly what is the cost of delay, and what rework budget does it justify?

    3 min answer cost-of-delaytechnical-debtsubstitutionsestimation
  4. Delivery vs Maintainability intermediate

    A team must ship a major capability quickly and the design that ships fastest is not the one that is easiest to maintain. How should the trade-off be made?

    1 min answer deliverymaintainabilityreversibilitydebt
  5. Managed vs Self-Managed intermediate

    A platform runs several self-managed stateful systems. What evidence should decide whether to move to managed services?

    2 min answer managed-servicesoperational-costceilingpinterest
  6. Managed vs Self-Managed intermediate

    A team is deciding whether to keep using a managed service or bring it in-house. What trigger should govern the decision, and what asymmetry usually settles it?

    2 min answer supabasemanagedbuild-vs-buytco
  7. Managed vs Self-Managed intermediate

    A team is deciding whether to run a database, broker or search engine itself or to use a managed service. What actually drives the decision, and which arguments are usually wrong?

    2 min answer managed-servicesoperationscostcontrol
  8. Managed vs Self-Managed intermediate

    Under what circumstances would you self-manage a message broker rather than use a managed service, and how would you justify it?

    2 min answer managed-servicestcooperationsjustification
  9. Monolith vs Microservices intermediate Multiple choice

    A new product, one team of eight, uncertain requirements, ambitious growth plans. Monolith or microservices?

    2 min answer decisionboundariespragmatism
  10. Performance vs Cost intermediate

    A team can make a workload ten times faster by tripling its infrastructure cost. What determines whether that is worth it?

    2 min answer databrickscostperformancethresholds
  11. Performance vs Cost intermediate

    Finance asks why your services run at 55% utilisation rather than 90%. What is your answer?

    2 min answer utilisationheadroomqueueinglatency
  12. Performance vs Cost intermediate

    Finance offers to fund a three-year committed-use discount covering most of the compute bill in exchange for a locked instance family and quantity, and engineering agrees. What has the architecture given up, and when does that bill arrive?

    3 min answer costcommitmentslock-inreversibility