Risk Management and Technical Debt Flashcards
7 cards from real CPSA practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Risk Management and Technical Debt flashcards as text
What is evolutionary architecture, and how does it address architectural risk over time?
Answer: An architecture designed to support guided, incremental change across multiple dimensions while preserving required characteristics
Evolutionary architecture, supported by fitness functions, allows a system to adapt incrementally to new requirements while continuously verifying essential architectural properties.
How does technical debt impact non-functional quality attributes such as maintainability and reliability?
Answer: Accumulated technical debt degrades maintainability and can introduce defects that reduce reliability
Technical debt increases code complexity and coupling, making the system harder to maintain and more prone to defects that compromise reliability.
What is the role of architecture governance in controlling technical debt and risk?
Answer: Governance establishes standards, review processes, and guardrails to prevent uncontrolled accumulation of debt and manage risk
Architecture governance defines the rules, review checkpoints, and enforcement mechanisms that keep systems aligned with their intended design and manage risk proactively.
Which of the following is the MOST effective way to communicate architectural risks to business stakeholders?
Answer: Express risks in terms of business impact — potential costs, delays, or loss of quality visible to end users
Business stakeholders respond to risks framed in terms they care about — schedule, cost, and customer experience — not internal technical metrics.
What is 'design debt', a specific category of technical debt?
Answer: Shortcuts or violations in the software's internal design, such as poor modularization or high coupling
Design debt refers specifically to structural deficiencies in the software's internal architecture, such as excessive coupling or poor cohesion that makes the system hard to change.
Which approach BEST supports identifying emerging technical debt early in an agile development process?
Answer: Integrating automated code quality gates and regular architecture reviews into the CI/CD pipeline
Embedding quality gates and architecture checks into CI/CD pipelines catches debt as it is introduced, enabling immediate feedback rather than costly late discovery.
What is 'risk storming' in the context of software architecture risk management?
Answer: A collaborative technique where architects and stakeholders collectively identify, categorize, and prioritize architectural risks on a shared diagram
Risk storming, described by Simon Brown, is a collaborative workshop where participants mark risks on architecture diagrams to ensure broad coverage and shared understanding.