5 exercises — master the phrasal verbs and verb phrases that IT professionals use every day: in standups, incident reports, PR reviews, and architecture docs.
8 essential IT verb phrases
Spin up — start/launch an environment or instance: "spin up a staging server"
Tear down — dismantle an environment: "tear down the load-test cluster"
Roll back — revert to a previous state: "roll back to v2.1.0"
Roll out — gradually deploy to users: "roll out the feature to 10% of users"
Scale out / Scale up — horizontal (more nodes) / vertical (bigger node) growth
Cut over — switch traffic to a new system: "cut over to the new database"
Flag up — highlight a risk or issue: "flag up a blocking dependency"
Sign off — give formal approval: "the architect signed off on the design"
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
During a deployment standup, your team lead asks: "Who will _____ the new Kubernetes cluster once the config is merged?" Which IT verb phrase correctly describes the action of starting and initialising the cluster?
Spin up means to start, launch, or initialise a new server, container, cluster, or environment — often from scratch. Example: "We need to spin up three new EC2 instances before the traffic spike." The other options don't fit this context: wrap up = to finish or conclude something ("Let's wrap up the sprint review"); sign off = to give formal approval ("The tech lead signed off on the architecture"); cut over = to switch traffic or users from one system to another, typically at the end of a migration ("We cut over to the new database at midnight"). Other "spin" phrases: spin down (shut something down), spin off (create a separate project or service from an existing one).
2 / 5
An incident postmortem reads: "After the faulty release caused a 40-minute outage, the on-call engineer decided to _____ to v2.3.1 while the team investigated the root cause." Which verb phrase fits?
Roll back means to revert a system, deployment, or database to a previous known-good state. It is the standard term in incident response and CI/CD workflows. Example: "If the health checks fail after deploy, the pipeline automatically rolls back to the last stable version." The other options don't fit: hand off = to pass responsibility to another person or team ("We handed off the on-call to the US team at 5pm"); kick off = to start something ("Let's kick off the migration this Friday"); flag up = to highlight a concern or issue ("She flagged up the memory leak during code review"). Related: roll out (to gradually deploy something to users) vs. roll back (to undo a deployment).
3 / 5
An architecture design doc states: "To handle increased load during peak hours, the service is designed to _____ horizontally by adding more worker nodes automatically." Which phrase is correct?
Scale out (also: horizontal scaling) means to increase capacity by adding more instances of a service — more machines, more pods, more nodes — rather than making one machine more powerful. Example: "The auto-scaling group scales out when CPU utilisation exceeds 70% for more than two minutes." Contrast with scale up (vertical scaling — increasing a single machine's CPU/RAM). The other options don't apply here: tear down = to dismantle or remove an environment ("We tear down the staging environment every Friday night to save costs"); wrap up = to finish; hand off = to transfer responsibility. Also useful: scale in (reduce the number of instances) and scale down (reduce machine size).
4 / 5
In a PR review comment, a senior engineer writes: "Please _____ the temporary load-testing environment once you've gathered the benchmark results — we're paying per-hour for those instances." Which phrase is correct?
Tear down means to dismantle, remove, or destroy an environment, infrastructure stack, or set of resources — the opposite of "set up" or "spin up". It is commonly used in the context of temporary environments (staging, load testing, feature branches) to save costs. Example: "The Terraform pipeline tears down the preview environment automatically when a PR is merged or closed." The other options don't fit: kick off = to start a process ("kick off the pipeline"); flag up = to raise a concern; sign off = to approve. Common pattern in test engineering: set up → run tests → tear down. In cloud contexts: terraform destroy is the command that tears down infrastructure.
5 / 5
At the end of a sprint retrospective, the Scrum Master says: "Before we close, I want to _____ a concern from the team — our deployment pipeline is taking over 45 minutes, which is blocking daily releases." Which verb phrase is most appropriate?
Flag up means to draw attention to an issue, risk, or problem — to make it visible to the relevant stakeholders. It is widely used in British professional English and is common in Agile ceremonies. Example: "The QA lead flagged up three critical defects before the release window opened." The other options don't fit this meaning: wrap up = to conclude or finish ("Let's wrap up this meeting"); cut over = to switch from one system to another in a migration; roll back = to revert a deployment. Related phrases for raising issues: raise a flag, call out (less formal), escalate (when the issue needs senior attention). In writing: "The team flagged up several performance regressions in the weekly report."