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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

48 questions in Business Architecture.

  1. Build vs Buy intermediate

    How do you decide whether to build or buy a capability, and what makes the decision reversible?

    2 min answer build-vs-buydifferentiationexit-costtco
  2. Build vs Buy intermediate

    In February 2022 Akamai announced it would acquire Linode for about $900 million and closed the deal in March 2022 at a purchase price of $898.8 million, adding an infrastructure-as-a-service business to a company that already ran one of the largest edge delivery networks. Akamai had the network, the capital and the engineers to build compute. What made buying the right call, and where would copying this be a mistake?

    3 min answer akamailinodebuild-vs-buyacquisition
  3. Build vs Buy intermediate

    What evidence should drive a build-versus-buy decision, and which arguments on each side are usually made badly?

    2 min answer build-vs-buydifferentiationtcovendor
  4. Business Architecture intermediate

    A startup asks you to architect their product "to handle millions of users". They currently have none. What do you actually build?

    2 min answer time-to-marketpragmatismconstraintsproduct
  5. Business Capabilities intermediate

    A travel platform's teams describe their work as "search", "book", "pay", "support". Are these capabilities or processes, and why does the distinction matter architecturally?

    2 min answer capabilitiesprocessesstabilityboundaries
  6. Business Capabilities intermediate Multiple choice

    What is the difference between a business capability and a business process, and why does it matter when drawing service boundaries?

    2 min answer capabilitiesprocessboundariesstability
  7. Business Cases intermediate Multiple choice

    A capability is expected to add about £90k a month in gross margin once live. The team can ship it in five months, or in three months by adding two contractors at £25k a month each. Which number decides it?

    3 min answer cost of delaybusiness caseprioritisationfinance
  8. Business Cases intermediate

    A lift-and-shift business case moves a two-socket database server with 32 Intel Xeon cores running Oracle Database Enterprise Edition onto a 64-vCPU instance in an authorised cloud environment. Compute, storage and egress are modelled carefully and the case shows a small saving. Which line is missing, and how big is it?

    3 min answer oraclelicensingmigrationbusiness case
  9. Business Continuity intermediate

    A business continuity manager asks for your disaster recovery plan. You give them the RTO/RPO matrix and they say it is not what they need. What is missing?

    1 min answer business-continuityresiliencebusiness-architecture
  10. Business Continuity intermediate

    A communication platform is business-critical for its customers' own operations. What does business continuity require beyond technical disaster recovery?

    2 min answer business-continuitydependenciescommunicationpeople
  11. Business Continuity intermediate

    A distributed commerce and logistics operation depends on physical infrastructure across many locations. How does business continuity planning differ from IT disaster recovery?

    2 min answer elasticruncontinuityphysicaldegraded-operations
  12. Business Continuity intermediate Multiple choice

    A marketplace's payment provider is not down. Authorisation p99 rises from 400 ms to 25 s and 12% of authorisations time out. The continuity plan states an RTO of 30 minutes and documents a failover to a second provider that takes 20 minutes and requires a named executive's decision. What actually happens in the first hour?

    3 min answer business-continuitydegraded-modepaymentsdeclaration-criteria