5 exercises — choosing the correct fixed verb for common DevOps and incident-management nouns.
Key patterns:
trigger a rollback / a build / an alert — not "make" or "do"
raise an incident / a ticket — standard ITSM collocation
pay down technical debt — finance metaphor, not "pay out"
patch a vulnerability — precise security-domain verb
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
A release note says: "On-call engineers _____ a rollback after the error rate exceeded the alert threshold." Which verb correctly collocates with "a rollback"?
"Triggered a rollback" is the standard collocation in DevOps English for initiating an automated or manual reversal of a deployment. "Made" and "did" are generic verbs that do not collocate naturally with technical nouns like "rollback"; native and professional usage strongly prefers trigger, initiate, or roll back (as a phrasal verb) instead. Related collocations: "trigger a build", "trigger an alert".
2 / 5
Choose the sentence with the correct verb-noun collocation for reporting a production issue:
"Raise an incident" (or "raise a ticket", "raise an alert") is the fixed collocation used across incident management and ITSM terminology. Native speakers do not say "make an incident" or "write an incident" in this context, even though those verbs are grammatically valid elsewhere. Collocations like this must be learned as fixed pairs rather than derived from general grammar rules.
3 / 5
A sprint retrospective note reads: "We need to _____ technical debt before the next feature push." Which verb correctly collocates with "technical debt"?
"Pay down technical debt" is a widely used collocation borrowed metaphorically from finance (as in "pay down a loan"), reflecting the idea that debt accumulates interest and must be reduced incrementally. "Pay out" implies a one-time disbursement, which does not match the ongoing nature of debt reduction. "Clean up" is understandable but is not the conventional collocation used in engineering culture; "wash off" does not collocate with "debt" at all.
4 / 5
Which sentence uses the correct verb-noun pairing to describe automated testing in a CI pipeline?
"Run a test suite" (or "run tests") is the standard collocation for executing automated tests. In technical English, run collocates naturally with processes, scripts, jobs, and tests, whereas generic verbs like do, make, and give either sound unnatural or carry the wrong meaning (e.g., "make tests" implies writing them, not executing them).
5 / 5
A security report states: "The team _____ the vulnerability within four hours of disclosure." Which verb best collocates with "vulnerability" in the sense of resolving it?
"Patch a vulnerability" is the precise, domain-specific collocation used in security English, referring to applying a targeted software update that closes the security gap. "Fixed" is acceptable in general contexts but is less precise in security reporting; "solved" and "ended" do not collocate naturally with "vulnerability" at all, since a vulnerability is not a puzzle to be solved or an event to be ended — it is a weakness that is patched, mitigated, or remediated.