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Quiz

2707 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 areas2707 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 Architecture96 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 Architecture98 Streaming & Real-Time Data93 Data Governance & Semantics91 Frontend & Experience Architecture91 Edge, Mobile & IoT88 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture90 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk98
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

3 questions in Architecture Principles.

  1. Architecture Principles intermediate

    A commerce platform adopts the principle "every service must survive the failure of any single dependency". A team building an internal analytics dashboard requests an exemption. What does holding the line cost, and what does granting the exemption cost?

    2 min answer principlesexemptionsresilienceshopify
  2. Architecture Principles intermediate

    An organisation's stated principle is "do not build what you can buy". In review it is used to reject an in-house rate limiter for the public API. The vendor option meets every functional need and adds a 40 ms round trip to a request path with a 120 ms p99 budget, and it cannot express the per-tenant burst rules the product sells. The principle is not withdrawn. What did the principle buy the organisation, and what is it now costing?

    3 min answer architecture-principlesbuild-vs-buygovernancelatency-budget
  3. Architecture Principles intermediate

    You are asked to produce a technology radar for a 200-engineer organisation with no current standards. How do you build the first one?

    2 min answer radargovernancestandardsconsolidation