5 exercises — mixed conditionals, third conditionals, and hypothetical structures for post-mortems, architecture reviews, and incident analysis.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Choose the grammatically correct mixed conditional: "We are still getting timeout errors because we _____ the database indexes."
"hadn't optimised" forms a mixed conditional: the past perfect in the if-clause describes a past action that affects the present situation. Full form: "If we had optimised the database indexes, we wouldn't still be getting timeout errors." This is a Type 3/2 mixed conditional — past cause, present consequence.
2 / 5
Which sentence is a correct third conditional describing a past deployment failure?
"If we had run the smoke tests, the deployment would have succeeded" is a correct third conditional: past perfect in the if-clause + would have + past participle in the main clause. It describes an imaginary past situation and its hypothetical outcome. This structure is essential for post-mortems and incident reviews.
3 / 5
Complete the mixed conditional for a tech context: "If we _____ a blue-green deployment strategy earlier, we _____ dealing with these rollback issues now."
"had adopted / wouldn't be" is correct. This is a mixed conditional (Type 3 → Type 2): "If we had adopted [past perfect — past cause] ... we wouldn't be dealing [would + be + -ing — present consequence]." It links a past decision to a current ongoing situation — common in technical retrospectives.
4 / 5
Choose the correct second conditional for a hypothetical architecture decision: "If we _____ to microservices, our deployment pipeline _____ much more complex."
"migrated / would become" forms a second conditional: simple past in the if-clause + would + infinitive in the main clause. This describes a hypothetical present or future scenario ("we're not migrating, but if we were..."). Second conditionals are common when evaluating architectural trade-offs.
5 / 5
An engineer is writing a post-mortem. Which sentence uses the third conditional correctly to describe root cause?
"If the memory leak had not been present, the service would not have crashed" is the correct third conditional in passive construction. Post-mortems routinely use this structure to explain causality: what would have been different if the root cause had not existed. Notice the passive "had not been present" — common in formal technical writing.