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2627 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 areas2627 Architecture Fundamentals81 Distributed Systems101 Data Architecture90 Cloud Architecture77 Networking86 API & Integration Architecture78 Reliability & Resilience88 Observability81 Performance & Capacity Engineering90 Security Architecture85 Cost Architecture & FinOps82 Business Architecture93 Architecture Communication91 Enterprise Architecture91 Legacy Modernization82 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 Architecture Decision-Making.

  1. Architecture Decision Records intermediate Multiple choice

    A 60-engineer platform organisation of nine teams is introducing decision records and leadership asks what a healthy annual volume looks like so they can tell whether the practice is working. Roughly how many records should they expect per year?

    2 min answer adrdecision-recordsestimationgovernance
  2. Architecture Decision Records intermediate

    A team writes decision records diligently and nobody reads them. What is wrong with the practice rather than the format?

    2 min answer adrdiscoverabilityrationalepractice
  3. Architecture Decision Records intermediate

    An interviewer asks you to pick an architectural decision your team made in the last year and write its decision record on the whiteboard, then hands you a fact partway through that would have changed the choice. What is being assessed, and how should you work through it?

    3 min answer adrdecision-recordsinterviewcontext
  4. Architecture Decision Records intermediate

    Review this decision log. It holds 140 records over four years in the repository. 31 are marked superseded and 9 of those name no successor. Two records state conflicting positions on the same message bus and both read "accepted". The template has a Consequences heading that is empty in 96 records. A new engineer asked what the current position on async messaging is and spent half a day finding out. What would you change, what would you remove, and what would you leave alone?

    3 min answer adrsupersessiondecision-lognavigability
  5. Architecture Decision Records intermediate

    Your team writes ADRs and nobody reads them. What is wrong with them?

    2 min answer documentationdecisionspractice
  6. Build vs Buy beginner Multiple choice

    A four-person startup needs SMS phone verification at signup - roughly 20000 messages a month to US numbers. One engineer proposes sending directly through a carrier gateway rather than paying a provider such as Twilio. Which fact should decide it?

    3 min answer build-vs-buysmscompliancevendor
  7. Build vs Buy intermediate Multiple choice

    A platform must decide whether to build or buy a capability. What is the primary test, and what is the pattern that usually works?

    2 min answer build-vs-buydifferentiationceilingdata
  8. Build vs Buy intermediate

    A team proposes building an authentication service rather than buying one, arguing it is two weeks of work. Respond.

    2 min answer decisioncostsecurity
  9. Build vs Buy advanced

    Your company needs a feature flag and experimentation platform. A vendor charges a substantial annual fee; a team estimates six weeks to build one. Decide.

    2 min answer build-buytcodifferentiationdecision
  10. 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
  11. 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
  12. 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