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Quiz

2667 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 areas2667 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 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

91 questions in Enterprise Architecture.

  1. InnerSource intermediate

    Team A is blocked for three weeks waiting on a small change from Team B. What are the options and what does each cost?

    2 min answer innersourcedependenciesbottleneckownership
  2. InnerSource advanced

    You maintain an internal library used by 60 teams. Your team of five also owns two products. Two teams have each opened a pull request adding something you do not want in the library - one a caching layer with its own configuration surface, the other a second serialisation format. Both teams are blocked on the outcome and both say innersource means they can contribute. Walk me through how you run this.

    3 min answer innersourcemaintainershipcontribution-contractreview-capacity
  3. Paved Roads advanced

    A company builds an internal platform to standardise how services are created and operated across hundreds of teams. What should it enforce, what should it leave flexible, and how does it avoid becoming an obstacle?

    3 min answer mercado-librefuryinternal-platformgolden-path
  4. Paved Roads intermediate

    An organisation builds a paved road and half the teams build their own infrastructure anyway. What does the adoption gap indicate?

    2 min answer paved-roadadoptiondeveloper-experienceplatform
  5. Paved Roads advanced

    From 2011 the UK's Government Digital Service required central approval for departmental digital spending above a threshold (about £100,000, and zero for some categories such as public-facing websites) alongside a published service standard and assessments. By 2026 the GDS-run controls had been retired in favour of departmental ownership with a much higher pipeline threshold. What did controlling the money achieve that a standards document could not, and where would copying it be a mistake?

    4 min answer gdsgovernancefundingstandards
  6. Paved Roads intermediate

    How does a paved road achieve governance outcomes without a mandate, and what makes it fail?

    2 min answer paved-roadgovernanceadoptiondefaults
  7. Platform Teams intermediate

    A platform team is overwhelmed by requests and product teams complain about waiting. What does the boundary between them need to change?

    2 min answer platform-teamsself-serviceboundaryrequests
  8. Platform Teams intermediate Multiple choice

    A platform team of 9 serving 300 engineers changes model. It stops publishing modules and libraries that teams run themselves and starts operating the runtime: it owns the clusters, the pipelines and the base images, and it holds the pager for them. Within two quarters the share of services on the supported path goes from 60% to 95% and a runtime upgrade that used to take three quarters takes five weeks. What has the organisation given up?

    3 min answer platform-teamsteam-topologieson-callcognitive-load
  9. Platform Teams intermediate

    When should an organisation create a platform team, and what distinguishes one from a service desk?

    2 min answer platformself-servicecognitive-loadbottleneck
  10. Platform Teams advanced

    You run a platform team of twelve serving four hundred engineers. Product teams say the platform is a bottleneck; your team says the requests are unbounded and they cannot do product work. Both are right. What do you change?

    2 min answer platform-teamsself-serviceboundariesprioritisation
  11. Application Rationalisation advanced

    A multi-product SaaS company has accumulated overlapping internal systems - three notification services, four job schedulers, two feature-flag systems. How should rationalisation be approached?

    2 min answer freshworksrationalisationportfolioconsolidation
  12. Application Rationalisation advanced

    A rationalisation programme assessed 400 applications and identified £8m of savings. Two years later nothing has been saved. Why?

    2 min answer eaportfolioexecution