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Quiz

3114 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 areas3114 Architecture Fundamentals91 Distributed Systems111 Data Architecture100 Cloud Architecture97 Networking96 API & Integration Architecture97 Reliability & Resilience99 Observability102 Performance & Capacity Engineering100 Security Architecture105 Cost Architecture & FinOps102 Business Architecture103 Architecture Communication102 Enterprise Architecture111 Legacy Modernization102 AI-Era Architecture106 Software Architecture & Engineering103 Architecture Patterns94 Architecture Decision-Making112 The Architect's Meta-Skills113 Delivery & Release Engineering103 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience102 Testing & Quality Architecture113 Data Platform Architecture108 Streaming & Real-Time Data103 Data Governance & Semantics101 Frontend & Experience Architecture112 Edge, Mobile & IoT109 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture109 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk108
Difficulty Any beginner intermediate advanced

3114 questions.

  1. Refactoring advanced

    An enterprise software vendor of SAP's shape must replace a logging call used at 2,400 sites across 1,100 files owned by 40 teams. The codemod itself takes an afternoon to write. Sequence the change so it lands once and stays landed.

    3 min answer codemodmechanical changebranchinglint
  2. Refactoring advanced

    Figma's database stack grew roughly 100x between 2020 and 2024. Rather than rewriting the application to be shard-aware in one step, the team vertically partitioned first, then introduced logical sharding, where queries still ran against a single database but were routed as if it were already sharded. Why is that intermediate step worth its cost, and what does it find that a cutover cannot?

    3 min answer figmapostgresshardingrefactoring
  3. Refactoring advanced

    Replacing a home-grown money type with a decimal-backed one fails to compile in 180 places across 11 modules the moment you try it. The team's previous attempt lived on a branch for five weeks and was abandoned. Sequence this so it lands and stays landed.

    3 min answer refactoringmikado methodtrunkincremental change
  4. Reference Architectures intermediate

    An enterprise publishes reference architectures that teams do not follow. What makes a reference architecture get used?

    2 min answer reference-architectureadoptioninstantiationdecisions
  5. Reference Architectures intermediate

    An estate of 240 internal HTTP services was built from a reference architecture over three years, and about 180 of them conform. The reference architecture now has to change - the standard timeout and retry behaviour was wrong and caused two incidents. Design the artefact set and mechanism that lets you revise the reference architecture and know, without asking anyone, which of the 180 have taken the revision.

    3 min answer reference architectureversioningconformancedrift
  6. Reference Architectures intermediate

    An organisation publishes reference architectures that teams do not follow. What is the failure, and what would work?

    2 min answer chargebeereference-architecturepaved-roadadoption
  7. Reference Architectures intermediate

    Three teams followed the published reference architecture exactly. All three produced the same defect - unbounded retry behaviour against a shared dependency - and two of them caused incidents. The reference architecture is not being ignored. Diagnose.

    3 min answer reference-architecturedefaultsretriesgovernance
  8. Reference Architectures intermediate

    You published a reference architecture. Teams are not following it. What is likely wrong?

    2 min answer eastandardsadoption
  9. Reference Data intermediate

    A reference data set of branch codes is maintained by an operations team. A branch closes in March and its code is retired. In September the code is assigned to a new branch in another city. Six months later finance asks why one branch's historical performance looks impossible. What happens across the estate?

    2 min answer reference-dataidentifiershistoryjoins
  10. Reference Data advanced

    A travel platform's currency, tax and geography reference data changes over time. Bookings must be reproducible years later. What does the reference data architecture need?

    1 min answer reference-dataversioningtemporalreproducibility
  11. Reference Data beginner

    An order total is stored as the integer 1000 alongside a currency code. In USD that is ten dollars. The same integer means one thousand yen in JPY and one dinar in KWD. A report sums the column across currencies and the total looks plausible. Why is this a reference-data problem rather than a bug in the report?

    3 min answer reference datacurrencyminor unitsiso 4217
  12. Reference Data intermediate

    Tax rates change annually and must apply from a specific date. How do you manage that across a dozen systems?

    2 min answer reference-dataversioningeffective-datesdistribution