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Module Quiz

Complete this quiz after finishing all concept and practice pages. Save your answers before opening separate quiz calibration.

Current Module Questions​

Question 1: Batch Size​

Why is a release that bundles 40 commits strictly worse than 40 releases of one commit each, from a delivery-safety perspective?

Question 2: Trunk-Based vs GitFlow​

Name one product shape where GitFlow-style release branches are genuinely justified, and one where they are not.

Question 3: DORA Shortcomings​

Name the four DORA metrics and one explicit shortcoming of using them.

Question 4: Build-Once Invariant​

A pipeline has docker build in both the build stage and the deploy-production stage. What invariant is violated, and what can go wrong?

Question 5: Read This YAML​

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment: production
    permissions:
      id-token: write
      contents: read
    steps:
      - uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4
        with:
          role-to-assume: arn:aws:iam::111:role/deploy
          aws-region: us-east-1
      - run: aws s3 sync ./dist s3://acme-assets/

What security property does this workflow have that a version using aws-access-key-id would not?

Question 6: Read This YAML​

strategy:
  type: RollingUpdate
  rollingUpdate:
    maxSurge: 2
    maxUnavailable: 2

A service has 10 replicas. A bug reaches the new image. What happens during rollout, and what single change would make this safer?

Question 7: Pick the Deployment Strategy​

Service: a new rewrite of the search backend. Correctness is uncertain under real production query distributions. You cannot compare results offline because production queries include private data. Choose a strategy and state why.

Question 8: Pick the Deployment Strategy​

Service: a payments ledger that writes to a strongly consistent store. You need to change the wire protocol between the application and the ledger -- mixed versions would cause inconsistent writes. Choose a strategy and state why.

Question 9: Rollback Criteria​

Write a rollback trigger as a concrete PromQL query and threshold for a user-facing HTTP API canary.

Question 10: SemVer​

Under SemVer, what version bump is each of the following?

  1. Add an optional query parameter to an HTTP endpoint.
  2. Rename a field in a JSON response body.
  3. Add a new required field to a request body.
  4. Fix a typo in an error message.

Question 11: Expand/Contract​

You need to drop a column users.legacy_token. Describe the minimum release sequence to do this safely.

Question 12: Signing​

A deploy admission controller rejects an image. Inspection shows the image has a valid cosign signature, but from identity repo:attacker/malicious:ref:refs/heads/main. Why is this rejection correct and what does this demonstrate?

Question 13: Feature Flag Debt​

Name the single practice that prevents feature-flag debt from accumulating in a codebase.

Question 14: OIDC Scoping​

An AWS IAM role with this trust policy condition:

"StringLike": {
  "token.actions.githubusercontent.com:sub":
    "repo:acme/*:*"
}

What access does this grant, and why is it probably wrong?

Question 15: Change Approval Boards​

What does DORA's research say about external change-approval boards (CABs) and delivery performance?

Interleaved Review Questions​

Prior Module Question 1 (Module 3 -- Container Orchestration)​

What is the role of a Kubernetes readiness probe during a rolling update?

Prior Module Question 2 (Module 2 -- Infrastructure as Code)​

Why is committing Terraform state to git a bad idea?

Prior Module Question 3 (Semester 7 -- Architecture)​

What is the "two-way door" heuristic for architectural decisions, and how does it relate to canary deployments?

Prior Module Question 4 (Semester 4 -- Git track)​

What is the difference between a Git tag and a branch?

Prior Module Question 5 (Semester 6 -- Testing)​

What is a consumer-driven contract, and why can it be verified in the consumer's CI, not the producer's?

Self-Assessment and Remediation​

Mastery Level (90-100% correct):

  • Retrieval is strong; complete all module and semester evidence gates before advancing.

Proficient Level (75-89% correct):

  • Review only the missed concept pages and redo two problems of each missed type.

Developing Level (60-74% correct):

  • Rework the practice pages, especially the deployment strategy workshop and the release/migration clinic.

Insufficient Level (<60% correct):

  • Return to the concept sequence and rebuild the "small, frequent, reversible" habit before advancing. Many wrong answers here trace back to treating delivery as a single event instead of a sequence of safe steps.

Added Process and Quality Questions​

  1. When would you choose a short Agile iteration over a fixed waterfall plan? Name the requirement signal that drives the choice.
  2. How do estimation, acceptance criteria, and CI checks reinforce each other?
  3. What is the delivery risk of long-lived branches, and how do trunk-based development, small commits, and review gates reduce it?
  4. Connect one SQA activity to one pipeline gate and one post-deploy signal.
  5. A rollback succeeded but the same bug returns next sprint. Which process artifact should change: test plan, runbook, branch policy, or estimation note? Defend your answer.

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.