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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

4 questions in Constraint Thinking.

  1. Constraint Thinking beginner

    A pipeline has four stages. Three run at about 30% utilisation and one runs at 95%. The team adds capacity to all four. Throughput barely moves. Why?

    2 min answer constraintsthroughputbottleneckqueueing
  2. Constraint Thinking intermediate

    A stakeholder states a requirement as an adjective. How does constraint thinking convert it into something designable?

    2 min answer constraintsrequirementsnumbersdrift
  3. Constraint Thinking beginner Multiple choice

    A team must ship a compliance-driven reporting system by a fixed statutory date nine months away. There are three engineers, no operations staff, an existing Postgres database, and no budget for new licences. Which constraint should drive the architecture?

    3 min answer constraintsoperabilityteam-sizeprioritisation
  4. Constraint Thinking intermediate

    Treat an operator's attention late in an incident as a hard constraint rather than a behaviour to coach. In January 2017 a GitLab engineer working past the end of their shift ran a destructive command against the primary database host instead of the replica. Which controls change that outcome and which are theatre?

    3 min answer gitlabhuman-factorsirreversibilityconstraints