5 exercises — choosing must, should, could, and might in code reviews, standups, security docs, and debugging.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Your team says their code is ready to deploy. You want to give a strong recommendation to add more integration tests first. Which modal verb is most appropriate?
Should is the right tool for professional recommendations. It signals strong advice without sounding like a rule or command — "You should profile this query", "You should document this decision". Using must ("You must add tests") sounds like an order and can come across as aggressive in code review. could and might are too weak — they imply the tests are merely optional suggestions.
2 / 5
In your standup you say: "The CI pipeline _____ finish in about 10 minutes." You're confident this will happen based on recent runs.
Should is used to express confident expectation in technical contexts: "It should deploy in 5 minutes", "The fix should resolve the issue", "This should scale to 10K concurrent users". Will is possible but expresses near-certainty; should is more honest when talking about systems that can have unexpected behaviour. Might expresses too much uncertainty for something you expect based on evidence.
3 / 5
In sprint planning a colleague says: "We _____ try using Redis for caching — it's worth discussing." Which modal best matches the intent?
Could introduces options and open possibilities without pushing them as requirements: "We could extract this into a service", "We could use feature flags here", "We could split this ticket". Using should would feel like a stronger push; must is far too strong for an exploratory suggestion. Could is ideal for sprint planning discussions where you're inviting the team to consider an idea, not advocating for it.
4 / 5
You're writing a security policy. Which sentence uses the correct modal to express a non-negotiable rule?
Must is the correct modal for obligations, requirements, and non-negotiable rules. It is used heavily in security documentation, RFCs, compliance requirements, and API specifications — "Tokens must be transmitted over HTTPS", "Callers must include an X-Request-ID header", "Roles must follow the principle of least privilege". Should in security docs means the rule is recommended but has exceptions; must means absolutely required.
5 / 5
During debugging you say: "The memory leak _____ (might/should/must) be related to unclosed database connections — I haven't confirmed yet." Which modal is correct?
Might expresses possibility — something is plausible based on evidence but not yet confirmed. This is the correct modal when diagnosing rather than concluding: "The timeout might be caused by a missing index", "This might be a cache invalidation issue", "The failure might be environment-specific". Once you've confirmed the cause, switch to "The leak is caused by..." or "The leak was caused by unclosed connections."