Taking responsibility for a codebase requires a specific vocabulary. These exercises cover the collocations software engineers and tech leads use when discussing module ownership, code quality, and technical debt.
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1 / 5
Each team is expected to ___ within its domain and ensure consistent APIs.
Own a module is the engineering collocation for bearing full responsibility for a software component — from design to production stability. 'Manage' implies oversight without full accountability; 'handle' and 'run' are informal and do not convey the same level of responsibility.
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The platform team's charter is to ___ across all shared infrastructure components.
Maintain quality is the standard engineering collocation for ongoing quality stewardship. 'Maintain' implies continuous, active effort. 'Ensure' is also common and emphasises the outcome; 'keep' and 'hold' are too informal for technical ownership discussions.
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The team has scheduled a tech-debt sprint to ___ accumulated over three years of rapid development.
Pay down debt is the canonical technical debt collocation, borrowed from finance. Teams pay down technical debt incrementally, just as one pays down a financial loan. 'Remove' and 'clear' imply complete elimination; 'fix debt' is not a standard expression.
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The platform guild meets monthly to ___ for all contributing teams.
Enforce standards is the correct collocation for actively ensuring compliance with agreed coding or architectural conventions. 'Enforce' implies authority and consequences. 'Apply' and 'follow' describe adherence by individuals; 'use standards' is too vague.
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All pull requests touching the payment service must ___ from two senior engineers before merging.
Review changes is the standard software engineering collocation for the pull-request process. Code review is formally called a 'review' in all major platforms (GitHub, GitLab). 'Check' and 'inspect' are informal; 'approve changes' describes the outcome, not the process.