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Quiz

2988 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 areas2988 Architecture Fundamentals91 Distributed Systems111 Data Architecture100 Cloud Architecture97 Networking96 API & Integration Architecture97 Reliability & Resilience99 Observability92 Performance & Capacity Engineering100 Security Architecture105 Cost Architecture & FinOps102 Business Architecture103 Architecture Communication102 Enterprise Architecture100 Legacy Modernization102 AI-Era Architecture106 Software Architecture & Engineering93 Architecture Patterns94 Architecture Decision-Making101 The Architect's Meta-Skills102 Delivery & Release Engineering103 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience102 Testing & Quality Architecture102 Data Platform Architecture98 Streaming & Real-Time Data103 Data Governance & Semantics91 Frontend & Experience Architecture101 Edge, Mobile & IoT98 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture99 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk98
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

2988 questions.

  1. Quality Attributes beginner

    A stakeholder writes "99.99% availability" into the brief for an internal expense-approval tool used by about 600 staff on weekdays between 08:00 and 19:00. Work out what that allows under three different denominators, and say which number you would put in the agreement.

    2 min answer availabilitysloerror budgetbeginner
  2. Quality Attributes advanced

    A streaming platform is adding scheduled live events to a catalogue service that has always served on-demand content. Which quality attributes change, and why is this not "the same system with more traffic"?

    2 min answer netflixlive-streamingquality-attributesdrivers
  3. Quality Attributes intermediate

    What happens if a global content delivery platform sets a quality-attribute target of "cache hit ratio above 95%" and simultaneously "content updates visible worldwide within 5 seconds"? Explain the conflict and how it is normally resolved.

    2 min answer quality-attributescachingcdnakamai
  4. Quality Attributes advanced

    You are starting a greenfield platform. How do you establish what the architecture must satisfy before designing anything?

    2 min answer driversquality-attributesconstraintsmethod
  5. Quality Gates intermediate

    A 12-year-old service has 4% test coverage and no tests for its core logic. It changes twice a year. Do you apply your quality gates to it?

    2 min answer legacypragmatismgovernance
  6. Quality Gates advanced

    A security vendor's release process gates sensor code behind staged rollout with canaries, and ships detection content through a separate path validated by a content checker and pushed to every customer within minutes. In July 2024 CrowdStrike's own root cause analysis describes exactly this shape, and a mismatch between 21 fields supplied and 20 fields read produced an out-of-bounds read that crashed around 8.5 million Windows hosts. Review the process. What would you remove, what would you add, and what would you leave alone?

    3 min answer crowdstrikerelease-gatesstaged-rolloutconfig-as-code
  7. Quality Gates intermediate

    An organisation's quality gates have accumulated and now block releases without reducing defects. How should the gate set be rationalised?

    2 min answer quality-gatesevidenceblockingrationalisation
  8. Quality Gates intermediate

    Leadership mandates 80% code coverage across all services. What do you say?

    2 min answer metricstestinggovernance
  9. Quality Gates intermediate

    Which automated quality gates are worth blocking a release on, and which are ceremony?

    2 min answer quality-gatescoveragestatic-analysisci
  10. Quality Gates intermediate

    Your CI suite fails about one run in four, and roughly 80% of those failures pass on a re-run. Developers now re-run by reflex, including on real failures. JetBrains ships flaky-test detection in TeamCity based on flip rate. Design the gate, and say what you refuse to do.

    3 min answer jetbrainsteamcityflaky testsquality gates
  11. Testing & Quality Architecture advanced

    A platform's quality is poor despite a large test suite. What does quality architecture address that more tests do not?

    2 min answer qualityarchitecturetestabilityfeedback
  12. Testing & Quality Architecture beginner

    A service has 95% line coverage and 3,000 passing tests. A bug shipped that made every order for one country total to zero. Why did the suite not catch it, and what kind of test would have?

    3 min answer coveragetest designassertionsbeginner