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Quiz

2741 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 areas2741 Architecture Fundamentals81 Distributed Systems101 Data Architecture90 Cloud Architecture87 Networking86 API & Integration Architecture78 Reliability & Resilience99 Observability92 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 Architecture102 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

2741 questions.

  1. Centralised vs Distributed advanced

    A marketplace expanding across cities must decide what is centralised and what is devolved. What principle draws the line?

    2 min answer urban-companycentralisationautonomyconfiguration
  2. Centralised vs Distributed advanced

    Eight product teams each call a shared entitlements service on every request. A four-person platform team owns it. It measured 99.95% availability over the last year and answers in 8 ms at p99. Leadership now wants feature-flag evaluation moved into the same service because it would be one place to change. What does that centralisation buy, and when does the bill arrive?

    2 min answer centralisationavailabilityfeature-flagsentitlements
  3. Centralised vs Distributed advanced

    Lyft open-sourced Envoy in September 2016 after running it internally, moving retries, timeouts, service discovery and network telemetry out of its services and into a sidecar proxy. Which problem did centralising the network layer solve that a shared client library could not, and what did the sidecar cost?

    2 min answer lyftenvoyservice-meshsidecar
  4. Centralised vs Distributed advanced

    When does a shared platform stop helping and start constraining, and what signal tells you?

    2 min answer platformcentralisationbottleneckautonomy
  5. Centralised vs Distributed intermediate

    When is a centralised architecture with a single relational database and vertically scaled application the right answer?

    2 min answer centralisedsimplicityscaleevidence
  6. Certification Impact on Architecture advanced Multiple choice

    An online retailer collects card numbers in a form on its own checkout page and posts them to a payment provider. 240 engineers can deploy the checkout service and the annual PCI DSS assessment is consuming three months of engineering time. Which single change most reduces the assessed scope?

    3 min answer pci-dssscope-reductiontokenisationcertification
  7. Certification Impact on Architecture intermediate

    An organisation pursues a certification. What should change in the architecture, and what should not?

    2 min answer druvacertificationcontrolsscope
  8. Certification Impact on Architecture advanced

    An organisation pursues a security certification. How should that change the architecture, and how should it not?

    2 min answer certificationcontrolsscopearchitecture
  9. Certification Impact on Architecture advanced

    How does pursuing a certification change how you design, beyond adding controls?

    2 min answer certificationscopeboundariesevidence
  10. Certification Impact on Architecture intermediate

    Your organisation is starting SOC 2. Someone proposes scoping it to the whole estate "to be safe". What is your advice?

    2 min answer certificationscopecompliancearchitecture
  11. Change Advisory vs Automated Gates beginner Multiple choice

    A change advisory board meets weekly and approves about 60 changes in a 40-minute meeting. Attendance is good and the minutes are complete. What assurance does the meeting actually provide?

    3 min answer change managementcabapprovalthroughput
  12. Change Advisory vs Automated Gates advanced

    A change advisory board reviews all production changes. Engineering wants automated gates. What is the actual trade?

    1 min answer change-managementcabautomationrisk