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Module Quiz

Complete this quiz after finishing all concept and practice pages. Save your answers before opening separate quiz calibration. Closed-book first, then open-book to fill gaps.

Current Module Questions​

Question 1: What Makes a Decision Architectural​

In one paragraph, state the two properties that make a decision architectural, and give one concrete example of a decision that looks architectural but is not.

Question 2: Architect Roles​

Name the three archetypal architect roles in this module and give one failure mode when any single role is over-weighted.

Question 3: Architecture vs Design vs Code​

Draw the blur line. For each of the following, classify as architecture, design, or code, and defend in one sentence: (a) switching from a monolith to two services, (b) adding an index on orders.customer_id, (c) introducing a repository pattern in one service, (d) choosing to run on Kubernetes instead of ECS.

Question 4: Functional vs Quality Requirements​

What is the smallest rewrite that turns "the system should be fast" into a quality-attribute scenario, and why is the rewrite necessary?

Question 5: Operational Qualities Distinguished​

Distinguish performance, scalability, availability, and reliability in a single sentence each. Then give a case where a system is highly available but unreliable.

Question 6: Evolutionary Qualities Distinguished​

Modifiability, testability, deployability - which is usually the bottleneck for weekly releases in a 5-year-old codebase, and why?

Question 7: Scenario - Top-3 Characteristics (Payments)​

Given these requirements, what are the top-3 architectural characteristics? Defend.

"A payment-processing platform for a regional bank. Processes teller-initiated deposits, withdrawals, and transfers. Regulated. 99.95% availability target. Must reconcile to the cent daily. Handles up to 500 concurrent tellers. New regulatory reporting requirements arrive yearly."

Question 8: Scenario - Top-3 Characteristics (Streaming)​

Given these requirements, what are the top-3 architectural characteristics? Defend.

"A video-streaming service with 40 million monthly active users. Users expect instant playback. Content teams need to publish and rotate metadata multiple times per day. 99.9% availability. Fault-tolerant to a single-region cloud outage."

Question 9: Scenario - Top-3 Characteristics (IoT)​

Given these requirements, what are the top-3 architectural characteristics? Defend.

"An IoT smart-building platform. Supports buildings with up to 50,000 devices. Operations needs better observability when devices go offline. Security is critical - penetration-test finding last year. Product ships a feature every two weeks. Integrates with many device vendors, new ones added quarterly."

Question 10: Fitness Function for a Real Scenario​

Write a fitness function for this scenario: "The teller module must not depend on ledger storage internals." Include check, failure signal, and pipeline wiring.

Question 11: No Right Answers​

A colleague says "microservices are objectively better than monoliths for our system." Rebut in one paragraph, without advocating for either side.

Question 12: Common Tradeoff Pair​

A system currently offers strong single-region consistency for a product catalog. The business wants the same catalog served with low latency in five regions. What changes, in one paragraph?

Question 13: Reversibility Classification​

Classify as one-way or two-way and estimate reversal cost for each: (a) choosing Protobuf as the internal event format, (b) introducing a feature-flag service, (c) moving authentication from per-service to a central identity service, (d) choosing URL path versioning (/v1/...) for a public API.

Question 14: Diagramming Discipline​

A colleague sends you a diagram with five unlabeled boxes connected by unlabeled arrows. What three questions do you ask before trusting it to inform an architectural decision?

Question 15: Architectural Risk and First Principles​

Your team proposes introducing Kafka between the order service and the shipping service "because event-driven is more scalable." From first principles, what is the minimum evidence you need before accepting the proposal?

Interleaved Review Questions​

Prior Module Question 1 (S6M4: Consistency models)​

How does the choice between strong and eventual consistency show up as a quality-attribute tradeoff in this module?

Prior Module Question 2 (S6M3: Distributed systems failure modes)​

Failures in distributed systems are partial and concurrent. Which architectural characteristics from Cluster 2 does this primarily force into the top-3 in that kind of system?

Prior Module Question 3 (S3M2: API design and versioning)​

Why is "we'll ship /v2 when we need to change the contract" a quality-attribute decision, not just an API decision?

Prior Module Question 4 (S3M4: Scaling patterns)​

A team says "we need to make the system scale." Rewrite that as a quality-attribute scenario and name what the team actually needs to decide.

Prior Module Question 5 (S6M1: Testing and coverage)​

How does testability in this module differ from "write more tests"?

Self-Assessment and Remediation​

Mastery Level (90-100% correct): Retrieval is strong. Advancement still requires every module and semester evidence gate; this score alone is insufficient.

Proficient Level (75-89% correct): Review the concept pages you missed, then redo either Practice 2 (Characteristics-from-Requirements Workshop) or Practice 3 (Tradeoff Analysis Clinic) depending on where the misses cluster. If the misses are in scenarios (Q7-Q9), redo Practice 2. If they are in tradeoffs (Q11-Q13), redo Practice 3.

Developing Level (60-74% correct): Rework Clusters 2 and 3 from the concept pages. The weakness is usually confusion between quality attributes (the general catalog) and architectural characteristics (the system-specific top few). Redo Practice 1 and Practice 2 in sequence, then retake the quiz, focusing on the scenario questions. Expect "scenario form with measurable response" to feel unnatural at first - that is the specific skill this level lacks.

Insufficient Level (< 60% correct): Restart from Cluster 1 Concept 1. The most likely root cause is treating architecture as code patterns or framework choices, rather than as structure + hard-to-reverse decisions. Until "is this actually architectural, or is it design?" is a reflex question, Clusters 2-5 cannot land. After redoing Cluster 1, pair with Cluster 4 (Tradeoffs) before Cluster 2 or 3; without the tradeoff mindset, the -ilities feel like a memorization list rather than a decision framework.

Progression boundary​

Quiz performance calibrates retrieval and reasoning. It does not replace runnable work, changed-case transfer, the module assessment or required semester evidence. Consult practice calibration for the additional independent cases.