Architecture Trade-Off Language: English Collocations
Architecture decisions involve deliberate trade-offs between consistency, availability, scalability, and maintainability. Capturing and communicating these trade-offs clearly is a key skill for senior engineers. This exercise covers the collocations used in architecture decision records, design reviews, and system design discussions.
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1 / 5
The architecture team needs to ___ the trade-offs between a monolith and a microservices approach.
Weigh the trade-offs is the canonical collocation in architecture discussions — 'weighing' trade-offs implies comparing options against each other with deliberate judgement. 'Evaluate' and 'assess' are also correct; 'consider' is less structured. 'Weigh' is the most idiomatic phrase in technical decision-making.
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The ADR should clearly ___ the rationale for choosing an event-driven architecture.
Capture the rationale is the standard Architecture Decision Record collocation — ADRs 'capture' reasoning so future engineers can understand why decisions were made. 'Document' is also correct and commonly used; 'explain' focuses on the act of communication; 'record' is more administrative.
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The team decided to ___ consistency in favour of availability for the user session cache.
Sacrifice consistency is the precise trade-off collocation in distributed systems discussions — 'sacrifice' implies deliberately giving up one property to gain another. 'Trade' is also used (trade consistency for availability); 'give up' is informal; 'compromise' implies a middle ground rather than a deliberate choice.
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Before the architecture review, the team should ___ the assumptions behind their scaling model.
Challenge assumptions is the standard collocation in architecture review culture — good architecture reviews 'challenge' assumptions to ensure decisions are based on evidence. 'Question' is a synonym; 'examine' and 'test' are more analytical. 'Challenge' carries the sense of healthy adversarial review.
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The CTO asked the team to ___ the long-term implications of introducing a synchronous coupling.
Assess the implications is the most professional collocation in architecture decision language — 'assess' implies a structured evaluation of consequences. 'Consider' is also natural; 'evaluate' is a close synonym; 'think about' is informal and does not convey the depth expected in a CTO-level discussion.