5 exercises — master gerund and infinitive patterns used in technical writing, code reviews, and sprint planning.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
The DevOps team is responsible for _____ the CI/CD pipeline.
After "responsible for", use a gerund (-ing form) because "for" is a preposition and prepositions must be followed by gerunds (nouns), not infinitives. Pattern: [adjective] + [preposition] + [gerund]. Other IT examples: "capable of scaling", "focused on delivering", "in charge of deploying".
2 / 5
The engineering team decided _____ the database migration to the next quarter.
"Decide" takes an infinitive: decide + to + infinitive. This is a verb of decision/intention that points to a future action. Compare with "suggest postponing" (gerund) — "suggest" belongs to the gerund group. Common IT infinitive verbs: decide, plan, choose, agree, refuse, fail, manage, attempt.
3 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "avoid" in an IT context?
"Avoid" always takes a gerund: avoid + [verb]-ing. Never use an infinitive after "avoid". This is a fixed grammatical rule. The gerund "deploying" acts as a noun (the object of "avoid"). Other gerund-only verbs common in IT: recommend testing, suggest refactoring, consider caching, finish implementing, keep monitoring.
4 / 5
The legacy service failed _____ within the health check timeout.
"Fail" takes an infinitive: fail + to + infinitive. The infinitive here refers to an action that did not happen — the failure event. This is crucial in incident language: "the service failed to respond", "the process failed to start", "the container failed to initialise". Compare "avoid responding" (different meaning and different construction).
5 / 5
A tech lead is writing a sprint planning note. Which sentence is grammatically correct?
"Aim" takes an infinitive: aim + to + infinitive. Option A incorrectly uses "aim at" (which would then need a gerund: "aim at completing" is technically possible but uncommon in formal writing). Option C omits the infinitive marker "to". Option D uses passive construction incorrectly. The standard form in technical planning language is "aim to + infinitive".