Digital and Cloud Scale Architecture · Stage test

Software Development and Architecture Advanced stage test

No governed timed route exists for this stage yet, so this page gives you an honest untimed stage-end check built from the published bank.

Format Untimed self-check
Questions 12
Best time to use it After the stage modules and practice

Question 1

What is observability and how does it differ from monitoring?

  1. They are the same thing
  2. Monitoring checks known failure modes with predefined metrics; observability lets you ask new questions about system behaviour using logs, metrics, and traces
  3. Observability is cheaper than monitoring
  4. Monitoring is real-time; observability is batch processing
Reveal answer

Correct answer: Monitoring checks known failure modes with predefined metrics; observability lets you ask new questions about system behaviour using logs, metrics, and traces

Question 2

What are the three pillars of observability?

  1. Servers, networks, applications
  2. Logs, metrics, and distributed traces
  3. CPU, memory, disk
  4. Development, testing, production
Reveal answer

Correct answer: Logs, metrics, and distributed traces

Question 3

What is a blue-green deployment strategy?

  1. A strategy using Docker containers
  2. Running two identical production environments (blue and green), routing traffic to one while deploying to the other, then switching
  3. A testing strategy that uses colour-coded test suites
  4. A database migration approach
Reveal answer

Correct answer: Running two identical production environments (blue and green), routing traffic to one while deploying to the other, then switching

Question 4

What is the key advantage of canary deployments over blue-green?

  1. Canary deployments are faster
  2. Canary gradually routes a small percentage of traffic to the new version, allowing early detection of issues before full rollout
  3. Canary deployments do not require two environments
  4. Canary deployments eliminate rollback needs
Reveal answer

Correct answer: Canary gradually routes a small percentage of traffic to the new version, allowing early detection of issues before full rollout

Question 5

What is the difference between technical debt and intentional technical debt?

  1. There is no difference
  2. Intentional technical debt is a deliberate decision to take a shortcut with a plan to address it later, while unintentional debt comes from lack of knowledge or rushed work without awareness
  3. Intentional debt is always acceptable
  4. Unintentional debt is always worse
Reveal answer

Correct answer: Intentional technical debt is a deliberate decision to take a shortcut with a plan to address it later, while unintentional debt comes from lack of knowledge or rushed work without awareness

Question 6

What is an architecture fitness function?

  1. A benchmark for measuring developer productivity
  2. An automated check that validates whether the architecture continues to meet its defined quality attributes and constraints over time
  3. A fitness tracker app built with good architecture
  4. A manual review performed by architects
Reveal answer

Correct answer: An automated check that validates whether the architecture continues to meet its defined quality attributes and constraints over time

Question 7

What is distributed tracing and why is it essential for microservices?

  1. A method for distributing test cases
  2. Tracking a single request as it flows through multiple services, enabling root cause analysis of latency and errors across the system
  3. A deployment strategy for distributing services
  4. A logging format for distributed databases
Reveal answer

Correct answer: Tracking a single request as it flows through multiple services, enabling root cause analysis of latency and errors across the system

Question 8

What is an architecture kata?

  1. A martial arts inspired team building exercise
  2. A structured exercise where teams design an architecture solution for a given scenario under time constraints, then present and defend their decisions
  3. A code review session
  4. A type of database query
Reveal answer

Correct answer: A structured exercise where teams design an architecture solution for a given scenario under time constraints, then present and defend their decisions

Question 9

What does the CAP theorem state about distributed systems?

  1. That distributed systems can achieve all three of Consistency, Availability, and Partition tolerance simultaneously
  2. That a distributed system can provide at most two of Consistency, Availability, and Partition tolerance, and must sacrifice one
  3. That distributed systems are always slower than centralised ones
  4. That databases cannot be distributed
Reveal answer

Correct answer: That a distributed system can provide at most two of Consistency, Availability, and Partition tolerance, and must sacrifice one

Question 10

What is the Inverse Conway Manoeuvre?

  1. A refactoring technique for legacy code
  2. Deliberately structuring teams to mirror the desired architecture, because team structure influences system design
  3. A deployment strategy for inverting service dependencies
  4. A testing pattern for edge cases
Reveal answer

Correct answer: Deliberately structuring teams to mirror the desired architecture, because team structure influences system design

Question 11

According to TOGAF, what is the Architecture Development Method (ADM)?

  1. A programming methodology
  2. An iterative process for developing and managing an enterprise architecture through defined phases from vision to change management
  3. A testing framework
  4. A project management certification
Reveal answer

Correct answer: An iterative process for developing and managing an enterprise architecture through defined phases from vision to change management

Question 12

What is chaos engineering and why do organisations use it?

  1. A way to create confusion in the development team
  2. The discipline of deliberately injecting failures into a system to discover weaknesses before they cause real outages
  3. A random code generation technique
  4. A project management anti-pattern
Reveal answer

Correct answer: The discipline of deliberately injecting failures into a system to discover weaknesses before they cause real outages

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