Software Engineering Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield Software Engineering facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. What is 'immutable infrastructure'? → Servers that are replaced rather than updated in place
2. Which practice involves automatically deploying every change that passes tests directly to production? → Continuous Deployment
3. What format do Agile user stories typically follow? → As a [user], I want [goal] so that [benefit]
4. Which pattern provides a way to access elements of an aggregate object sequentially without exposing its underlying representation? → Iterator
5. Which of the following activities is a part of quality assurance? → Process audit
6. What is the primary purpose of a software design pattern? → To provide reusable solutions to commonly occurring design problems
7. Which technique used in security assessment involves simulating an attacker's perspective to identify vulnerabilities in a system? → Penetration testing
8. Which requirements elicitation method involves creating a working model of the system to gather user feedback? → Prototyping
9. Which of the following phases in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is the most crucial? → Requirements analysis
10. What is 'scope creep' in software projects? → The unauthorized or uncontrolled expansion of project scope beyond its original boundaries
11. What does 'technical debt' refer to in software engineering? → Future rework caused by choosing quick solutions now
12. In SAFe, what is a 'PI Planning' event? → A quarterly planning event aligning teams on objectives
13. Which of the following is a peer review example? → Code review
14. In a relational database, what does the term 'normalization' primarily aim to reduce? → Data redundancy and anomalies
15. Which software development methodology emphasizes iterative development, collaboration, and responding to change over following a fixed plan? → Agile
16. What is a 'stakeholder' in the context of requirements engineering? → Any person or organization with an interest in or affected by the system
17. Which model can be chosen if the user participates in every stage of the SDLC? → RAD Model
18. Which algorithm traversal visits all nodes at the current depth level before moving to the next level? → Breadth-First Search (BFS)
19. What does 'YAGNI' stand for and what does it advise? → You Aren't Gonna Need It — don't implement features until they are actually needed
20. An independent verification and validation (IV&V) assessment differs from standard V&V primarily because it is performed by whom? → A party organizationally independent from the development team
21. Which concept in DevOps security integrates security practices throughout the entire CI/CD pipeline? → DevSecOps
22. What is 'requirements volatility'? → The tendency of requirements to change during the project lifecycle
23. In a CI/CD pipeline, what does 'CD' typically stand for? → Continuous Delivery or Continuous Deployment
24. What is a 'stub' in the context of software testing? → A minimal fake implementation of a dependency used to isolate the unit under test
25. Which diagram type is most commonly used to visualize the system boundary and interactions between actors and the system? → Use case diagram
26. An activity in the software life cycle that involves keeping tests from an earlier version to make sure the current one keeps the old one's capabilities. → Regression testing
27. What does CI stand for in the context of DevOps? → Continuous Integration
28. Ideally, integration test cases will pass if the unit test case does. → True
29. If there is a tight deadline for project development, one may opt for the waterfall model. → False
30. A specific type software life cycle activity that entails assessing the product's potential market. → Market analysis