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Module Quiz

Complete this quiz after finishing all concept and practice pages. Save your answers before opening separate quiz calibration. This quiz is deliberately scenario-heavy; recall questions are a minority. Most answers are judgment calls with a defended choice.

Current Module Questions​

Question 1: Archetypes​

A Principal engineer's calendar shows: 60% sprint ceremonies, 20% 1:1s with team members, 15% PR review, 5% cross-team design discussion. Which Staff+ archetype is this person actually operating as? Why?

Question 2: Altitude Judgment (Scenario)​

Your team's release pipeline is 90 minutes long and flaky. You have 2 hours this week to work on it. Which move is the best use of Staff+ time?

a) Open the 3 flakiest tests, fix them, reduce runtime by ~20 minutes. b) Write an RFC proposing to split fast unit tests from slow integration tests across the entire monorepo. c) Schedule a strategy conversation with platform leadership about whether the company's one-pipeline topology matches the team structure. d) Pair with the most junior engineer on the team and teach them to fix one of the flaky tests.

Question 3: Diagnosis vs Symptoms​

Which of the following is a diagnosis, and which is a symptom list?

A. "The platform team ships slowly because they spend 60% of their time on unplanned consulting from product teams. The crux is the intake pattern, not staffing." B. "The platform team has too much work. Backlog is growing. People are tired. Velocity is down."

Question 4: Guiding Policy (Scenario)​

Which of the following is a guiding policy, and which is a slogan?

a) "We will be customer-obsessed and move fast." b) "We will not build custom integrations for teams below a $2M ARR threshold." c) "Quality is our top priority this quarter." d) "Paved road over consulting: we build self-service paths, not bespoke integrations."

Question 5: Roadmap Capacity​

A team of 5 engineers, 13-week quarter, 60% project time (rest is on-call + toil). What is the realistic engineer-week capacity for Now? If current Now is packed with 45 engineer-weeks of commitments, what is the correct response?

Question 6: Anti-Scope​

Why is anti-scope often more load-bearing than scope in an engineering strategy document?

Question 7: RACI Judgment (Scenario)​

A decision has two people in "Accountable" because "both their orgs are affected." What is wrong with this setup, and how do you fix it?

Question 8: Disagree-and-Commit (Scenario)​

Your VP has chosen Go over Rust for a service rewrite. You disagree but executed anyway. Six weeks later, the rewrite is behind schedule. In the retrospective, you say: "I always had concerns about the language choice." What did you do wrong?

a) Nothing; you executed in good faith. b) You should not have agreed to execute. c) You should have stated the disagreement in writing before the decision, with an observable trigger for reopening. Surfacing concerns only in retrospect is silent dissent. d) You should have executed Go faster.

Question 9: Written-First Culture​

Name two specific gains a written-first culture produces that a spoken-first culture does not.

Question 10: Audience Mismatch (Scenario)​

A Staff engineer sends a 10-page database-migration design doc to the VP with the subject "Approve migration?" The VP does not respond for two weeks. What is the most likely cause?

a) The VP is busy. b) The doc was sent to the wrong VP. c) The doc was the wrong artifact for an exec audience; the engineer should have sent a 3-5 sentence exec summary with a specific ask. d) The design is technically flawed.

Question 11: BLUF​

Rewrite this executive summary as BLUF (under 5 sentences):

"We've been investigating the orders service performance for the past quarter. After multiple attempts at optimization, we now believe the database is the bottleneck. We've considered several alternatives. We'd like to propose a migration."

Question 12: Storytelling Slots (Scenario)​

A design presentation hits "Problem," "Choice," and "Consequences" but skips "Constraint" and "Options." What is the most likely flaw in the design?

Question 13: Feedback (Scenario)​

"You were really unhelpful in the review yesterday." Rewrite this as SBI feedback.

Question 14: Mentorship vs Sponsorship​

Give one concrete example of a mentorship move and one concrete example of a sponsorship move. Explain why they are different.

Question 15: Career Anchor Fit (Scenario)​

A Staff engineer with a "technical/functional competence" anchor is offered a management promotion. Their current role is depth-focused. The new role is people-focused, with +20% comp. The offer is presented as a career step. What is the right response?

a) Accept - promotions should always be accepted. b) Decline reflexively - management is bad. c) Evaluate against the named anchor: does management serve their technical/functional anchor, or contradict it? If it contradicts, declining is the right move even at +20% comp. d) Accept conditionally, with a written option to return to IC in 18 months.

Question 16: Accountable Decision (Scenario)​

A team says an automated account-suspension feature is ethically acceptable because it reduces fraud overall and passed legal review. Name four pieces of evidence or control still required before that claim is defensible.

Interleaved Review Questions​

(5 questions from previous modules to maintain retention)

Prior Module Question 1 (Semester 7, Module 5 - ADRs)​

What are the three required sections of an ADR, and what fails if any is missing?

Prior Module Question 2 (Semester 8, Module 1)​

Why is "latency" usually a poor first-level SLI and what is better?

Prior Module Question 3 (Semester 8, Module 2)​

What is the difference between a service boundary and a data boundary?

Prior Module Question 4 (Semester 8, Module 3)​

Why does event-driven architecture reduce coupling in one direction while increasing it in another?

Prior Module Question 5 (Semester 8, Module 4)​

What is an SLO and how does it constrain engineering priorities?

Self-Assessment and Remediation​

Scoring and Advancement Criteria​

Mastery Level (90-100% correct):

  • Retrieval is strong; complete all module and semester evidence gates before advancing.
  • Evidence: you can reason through scenarios without reaching for the concept page.

Proficient Level (75-89% correct):

  • Targeted review: rewrite any scenario answer you got wrong in a memo form; imagine defending it to a peer.
  • Practice: redo Kata 1 and Kata 3 with new scenarios.

Developing Level (60-74% correct):

  • Systematic review: reread the clusters where you missed two or more questions.
  • Practice: complete Stakeholder Influence Clinic end-to-end on a new real decision.
  • Practice: redo Strategy Memo Lab with a different problem.

Insufficient Level (<60% correct):

  • Return to Cluster 2 (strategy) and Cluster 3 (influence) concepts and redo the drills.
  • Find a peer or mentor to talk through 3 scenarios aloud; scenario judgment is hard to build alone.
  • Extend the module by 1-2 weeks; this is about practice, not reading.

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.