CPSA Risk Management and Technical Debt 3

Question 1

What is evolutionary architecture, and how does it address architectural risk over time?

Accepted Answer

An architecture designed to support guided, incremental change across multiple dimensions while preserving required characteristics

Answer

An architecture that changes only in response to security threats

Answer

A waterfall approach where the architecture is fully defined before development begins

Answer

A microservices architecture that automatically scales based on traffic

Question 2

How does technical debt impact non-functional quality attributes such as maintainability and reliability?

Accepted Answer

Accumulated technical debt degrades maintainability and can introduce defects that reduce reliability

Answer

Technical debt has no impact on non-functional attributes, only on feature delivery speed

Answer

Technical debt always improves performance by removing unnecessary abstractions

Answer

Technical debt only affects the user interface layer of a system

Question 3

What is the role of architecture governance in controlling technical debt and risk?

Accepted Answer

Governance establishes standards, review processes, and guardrails to prevent uncontrolled accumulation of debt and manage risk

Answer

Governance ensures developers are billed for the technical debt they introduce

Answer

Governance is solely responsible for approving software budgets

Answer

Governance replaces the need for automated testing and code reviews

Question 4

Which of the following is the MOST effective way to communicate architectural risks to business stakeholders?

Accepted Answer

Express risks in terms of business impact — potential costs, delays, or loss of quality visible to end users

Answer

Provide a detailed technical report using UML diagrams and code metrics

Answer

Present risks only to the development team and resolve them internally

Answer

List all risks alphabetically in the project documentation without prioritization

Question 5

What is 'design debt', a specific category of technical debt?

Accepted Answer

Shortcuts or violations in the software's internal design, such as poor modularization or high coupling

Answer

Debt incurred by purchasing expensive design tools

Answer

The cost of redesigning the user interface for a new brand identity

Answer

Accumulated backlog of UI/UX improvement requests from users

Question 6

Which approach BEST supports identifying emerging technical debt early in an agile development process?

Accepted Answer

Integrating automated code quality gates and regular architecture reviews into the CI/CD pipeline

Answer

Conducting a full architecture review only at the end of each major release

Answer

Relying on developers to self-report technical debt voluntarily

Answer

Waiting for production incidents before investigating code quality

Question 7

What is 'risk storming' in the context of software architecture risk management?

Accepted Answer

A collaborative technique where architects and stakeholders collectively identify, categorize, and prioritize architectural risks on a shared diagram

Answer

A brainstorming session focused solely on project scheduling risks

Answer

An automated tool that scans codebases for security vulnerabilities

Answer

A formal audit methodology conducted by an external review board