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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

41 questions in Meta-Skills.

  1. Estimation intermediate

    An architect is asked how long a migration will take and has genuinely no basis for a number. How should estimation be approached so the answer is useful rather than either false precision or a refusal?

    2 min answer estimationuncertaintyrangesdecomposition
  2. Estimation intermediate

    An architect is asked how long a migration will take and has genuinely no idea. What is the responsible answer?

    2 min answer growwestimationuncertaintyranges
  3. Estimation intermediate

    An architect must estimate a large piece of work with genuine uncertainty. What makes an estimate useful rather than misleading?

    2 min answer estimationrangesassumptionsuncertainty
  4. Estimation intermediate

    You are asked how long a migration will take. You genuinely do not know within a factor of three. What do you say?

    2 min answer estimationcommunicationuncertainty
  5. Ethics in Architecture intermediate Multiple choice

    A consumer app logs full request and response bodies for 30 days to chase a client bug. The bodies contain home addresses and partial payment identifiers. Which change most reduces foreseeable harm?

    3 min answer data-minimisationloggingprivacyethics
  6. Failure Thinking intermediate

    A major platform launch is three months away. How would you run a pre-mortem, and why bother?

    2 min answer riskfacilitationmeta-skills
  7. First-Principles Reasoning intermediate

    A vendor's datastore is documented at one million writes per second. Your cluster does 40000 writes per second and p99 write latency is 900 ms. Nothing is erroring. Work from first principles - where do the claim and your reality diverge?

    2 min answer first-principlesbenchmarkswrite-amplificationdurability
  8. First-Principles Reasoning intermediate

    An architect faces a problem that resembles a known pattern but does not quite fit. How should first-principles reasoning and pattern recognition be combined?

    2 min answer zeptofirst-principlespatternsjudgement
  9. Handling Ambiguity intermediate

    The constraint that shaped your design - order records must stay inside the country - came from a conversation with the VP who commissioned the work. She leaves in month three. What happens to the design next and what should have been in place?

    3 min answer constraintsprovenanceambiguitydata-residency
  10. Handling Ambiguity intermediate

    You must start designing and the requirements are genuinely unclear. What do you do?

    2 min answer ambiguityassumptionsprogressoptions
  11. Mentoring intermediate Multiple choice

    An engineer you mentor proposes a design that will work but is not the one you would choose: a single queue with a database-backed dedupe table where you would have used the broker's own idempotent producer. They have thought it through. You are reviewing it. What should you do?

    2 min answer mentoringreviewjudgementreversibility
  12. Mentoring intermediate

    How does an architect develop architectural judgement in others rather than just answering their questions?

    2 min answer mentoringjudgementreasoningdelegation