Software Engineering Prep 4

Question 1

Which Agile ceremony is specifically designed to inspect the team's process and identify improvements?

Accepted Answer

Retrospective

Answer

The retrospective focuses on how the team worked — not what was built — to continuously improve collaboration and process.

Question 2

What does 'coupling' measure in software design?

Accepted Answer

How much one module depends on another

Answer

Coupling measures the degree of interdependence between software modules; low coupling is preferred for maintainability.

Question 3

Which sorting algorithm has an average-case time complexity of O(n log n)?

Accepted Answer

Merge Sort

Answer

Merge Sort divides the array recursively and merges in sorted order, achieving O(n log n) in all cases.

Question 4

In object-oriented programming, what is polymorphism?

Accepted Answer

The ability for objects of different types to be treated through a common interface

Answer

Polymorphism allows different classes to be treated uniformly via a shared interface while exhibiting different behaviors.

Question 5

What is the purpose of environment variables in software deployment?

Accepted Answer

To externalize configuration so the same code runs in dev, staging, and production

Answer

Environment variables decouple configuration from code, enabling the same build artifact to behave differently per environment.

Software Engineering Practice Test