Causative Structures in Incident Reports
0 / 10 completed
1 / 10
A postmortem states:
"The service outage _____ a misconfigured load balancer health check."
Which causative verb correctly expresses direct causation?
"The service outage _____ a misconfigured load balancer health check."
Which causative verb correctly expresses direct causation?
Resulted from is correct. "X resulted from Y" means Y was the direct cause of X. This is the standard bidirectional causative: "The outage resulted from a misconfigured health check" = "The misconfigured health check resulted in an outage". In postmortems, "resulted from" identifies the root cause. Triggered would also work but suggests a more immediate/event-based causation. Contributed to implies partial causation. Was exacerbated by means was made worse — implies the outage existed before the health check issue.
2 / 10
An incident report reads:
"The memory leak _____ a cascade of service restarts across the cluster."
Which causative verb expresses that one event caused a chain reaction?
"The memory leak _____ a cascade of service restarts across the cluster."
Which causative verb expresses that one event caused a chain reaction?
Triggered is correct. "Triggered" expresses that an initial event set off a chain reaction — it is the standard word in incident reports for cascade failures. "The memory leak triggered a cascade" implies the leak was the initiating event. Resulted from reverses the causation. Was caused by would require restructuring ("The cascade was caused by the memory leak"). Contributed to implies only partial causation — a cascade trigger is usually direct, not partial.
3 / 10
A postmortem analysis states:
"The slow DNS resolution _____ the initial outage by delaying health checks."
Which phrase correctly identifies a factor that made an existing problem worse?
"The slow DNS resolution _____ the initial outage by delaying health checks."
Which phrase correctly identifies a factor that made an existing problem worse?
Exacerbated is correct. "X exacerbated Y" means X made Y worse. "The slow DNS resolution exacerbated the initial outage" — the outage already existed, and DNS issues amplified it. Note the direction: the subject (DNS resolution) is the aggravating factor, and the object (the outage) is what got worse. Was exacerbated by would reverse the subject/object relationship. Triggered implies it started the outage. Resulted in means caused as an outcome.
4 / 10
An incident timeline reads:
"The disk filling up _____ the database process being killed by the OOM killer."
Which causative correctly links the preceding event to its consequence?
"The disk filling up _____ the database process being killed by the OOM killer."
Which causative correctly links the preceding event to its consequence?
Led to is correct. "X led to Y" is a sequential causative: X happened first and caused Y as a consequence. "The disk filling up led to the database process being killed" correctly establishes the temporal and causal sequence. Resulted from reverses the causation direction. Was exacerbated by means was made worse — the database being killed is the result, not something being worsened. Contributed to implies only partial causation.
5 / 10
A root cause analysis identifies:
"Three factors _____ the extended recovery time: inadequate monitoring, no automated failover, and unclear runbooks."
Which causative is correct for multiple contributing factors?
"Three factors _____ the extended recovery time: inadequate monitoring, no automated failover, and unclear runbooks."
Which causative is correct for multiple contributing factors?
Contributed to is correct. When multiple factors each played a partial role in an outcome, "contributed to" is the accurate causative. It avoids overstating any single factor as the sole cause. "Three factors contributed to the extended recovery time" is the standard phrasing in blameless postmortems where systemic causes are identified. Triggered implies a single initiating event. Resulted in and led to imply a more direct, single-chain causation.
6 / 10
A deployment post-mortem states:
"The failed deployment _____ a revenue loss of approximately £12,000 over three hours."
Which causative correctly expresses the financial consequence?
"The failed deployment _____ a revenue loss of approximately £12,000 over three hours."
Which causative correctly expresses the financial consequence?
Resulted in is correct. "X resulted in Y" means X was the cause and Y is the measurable outcome. "The failed deployment resulted in a revenue loss" expresses a direct causal link to a business consequence. This is the standard phrasing in executive incident summaries where financial impact is quantified. Was caused by reverses subject/object. Triggered is slightly more dramatic and is more common for technical cascade events than business consequences. Contributed to implies partial causation — if the deployment was the sole cause, "resulted in" is more accurate.
7 / 10
Which sentence uses a causative structure incorrectly?
Option C is incorrect. "Was resulted in" is not a valid passive construction. "Result in" is an intransitive phrasal verb and cannot be made passive. The correct constructions are either active ("The slow database response resulted in the API timeout") or a passive with "caused by" ("The API timeout was caused by a slow database response"). Options A, B, and D all use causative structures correctly.
8 / 10
A blameless postmortem states:
"The incident _____ inadequate load testing before the release."
Which causative correctly identifies the root cause using passive voice?
"The incident _____ inadequate load testing before the release."
Which causative correctly identifies the root cause using passive voice?
Was caused by is correct. The passive "was caused by" identifies the root cause without assigning individual blame — perfectly aligned with blameless postmortem culture. The agent (inadequate load testing) is a systemic factor, not a person. "The incident was caused by inadequate load testing" follows the passive structure correctly. Triggered and led to are active verbs that would need the causation direction reversed. Resulted in would also reverse the direction.
9 / 10
An SRE writes in a retrospective:
"The alert fatigue _____ the on-call engineer missing the critical signal in the noise."
Which causative correctly expresses that alert fatigue made the missing more likely?
"The alert fatigue _____ the on-call engineer missing the critical signal in the noise."
Which causative correctly expresses that alert fatigue made the missing more likely?
Led to is correct. "Alert fatigue led to the engineer missing the critical signal" describes a sequential process: alert fatigue (established pattern) created conditions in which the engineer missed a signal. Triggered implies a discrete event-based causation — less natural for a gradual contributing condition like fatigue. Contributed to implies partial causation — which is accurate but "led to" is more direct when the link is strong. Resulted from reverses the causation.
10 / 10
A final postmortem summary states:
"The outage _____ three independent failures: a network partition, a misconfigured circuit breaker, and an expired SSL certificate."
Which causative correctly frames the compound root cause?
"The outage _____ three independent failures: a network partition, a misconfigured circuit breaker, and an expired SSL certificate."
Which causative correctly frames the compound root cause?
Was triggered by is correct. "The outage was triggered by three independent failures" uses passive voice and expresses that three concurrent initiating events caused the outage. "Triggered by" is appropriate here because the three failures were the initiating events — they started the outage, not merely worsened it. Resulted in reverses the direction. Contributed to would imply the outage existed before these failures. Was exacerbated by implies the outage already existed and these factors made it worse.