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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

41 questions in Meta-Skills.

  1. Meta-Skills intermediate

    A strong senior engineer is promoted to architect and struggles. Which skills transfer and which must be learned?

    2 min answer meta-skillstransitioninfluenceambiguity
  2. Meta-Skills intermediate

    You must choose a data store this week. The product team cannot tell you the expected query patterns or the growth rate. What do you do?

    2 min answer uncertaintyreversibilitydecision-making
  3. Judgement Under Uncertainty intermediate Multiple choice

    Zoom's daily meeting participants went from roughly 10 million in December 2019 to roughly 300 million by April 2020. No forecast produced that number. Which planning posture best survives a demand shift of that size?

    2 min answer zoomcapacityuncertaintyelasticity
  4. Pragmatism intermediate

    An architect must choose between the correct design and the one that ships in time. How should pragmatism be exercised without accumulating unmanageable debt?

    2 min answer linearpragmatismdebtreversibility
  5. Pragmatism intermediate

    You inherit a well-designed plan for a new order-management platform: eight months, event-sourced, three services, a migration path off the legacy system. The business now needs working functionality in ten weeks for a contractual commitment. How do you sequence this so the ten-week work is not thrown away?

    3 min answer sequencingpragmatismlegacyincremental-delivery
  6. Pragmatism intermediate

    You review a design for an internal tool with 200 users: microservices, Kubernetes, event sourcing, CQRS, multi-region. How do you respond?

    2 min answer pragmatismreviewcomplexity
  7. Prioritisation intermediate

    120 engineers wait on a 45-minute pipeline, merging about 6 times a week each. Estimate the annual cost of that wait, and say what the number does and does not justify.

    2 min answer estimationdeveloper-productivityprioritisationcost-of-delay
  8. Prioritisation intermediate

    An architect has more improvement proposals than the organisation has capacity. What sequencing rule matters most?

    1 min answer prioritisationenabling-workleveragecost-of-inaction
  9. Prioritisation intermediate

    An architect has more work than capacity and every item has an advocate. What method produces a defensible allocation?

    2 min answer nykaaprioritisationcapacityallocation
  10. Prioritisation intermediate

    You are a new architect and every team tells you a different story about what is wrong. How do you decide where to start?

    1 min answer meta-skillsprioritisationonboarding
  11. Research & Evaluation intermediate

    A team's evaluation of a new datastore is a benchmark report: throughput at three concurrency levels, p99 latency, and a cost comparison. They want to commit. Review the evaluation. What is missing and what would you add?

    2 min answer booking.comtechnology-evaluationbenchmarksoperability
  12. Research & Evaluation intermediate

    An architect must evaluate an unfamiliar technology for a significant decision. What research approach produces a reliable judgement?

    2 min answer researchevaluationspikeevidence