@forwardimpact/schema 0.9.1 → 0.9.2

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Files changed (16) hide show
  1. package/examples/questions/capabilities/business.yaml +37 -40
  2. package/examples/questions/capabilities/delivery.yaml +32 -36
  3. package/examples/questions/capabilities/people.yaml +37 -40
  4. package/examples/questions/capabilities/reliability.yaml +35 -38
  5. package/examples/questions/capabilities/scale.yaml +35 -36
  6. package/examples/questions/skills/architecture_design.yaml +59 -49
  7. package/examples/questions/skills/cloud_platforms.yaml +53 -41
  8. package/examples/questions/skills/code_quality.yaml +81 -31
  9. package/examples/questions/skills/data_modeling.yaml +43 -39
  10. package/examples/questions/skills/devops.yaml +46 -39
  11. package/examples/questions/skills/full_stack_development.yaml +41 -36
  12. package/examples/questions/skills/sre_practices.yaml +40 -37
  13. package/examples/questions/skills/stakeholder_management.yaml +37 -36
  14. package/examples/questions/skills/team_collaboration.yaml +39 -33
  15. package/examples/questions/skills/technical_writing.yaml +39 -35
  16. package/package.json +1 -1
package/examples/questions/capabilities/business.yaml CHANGED
@@ -7,8 +7,8 @@ professionalQuestions:
7
7
  The product team wants to add a feature that will increase revenue but
8
8
  requires significant technical investment. How would you evaluate this?
9
9
  context:
10
- The feature is an AI-powered recommendation engine. Product estimates
11
- 15% revenue increase. Your team estimates 4 months of work and ongoing
10
+ The feature is an AI-powered recommendation engine. Product estimates 15%
11
+ revenue increase. Your team estimates 4 months of work and ongoing
12
12
  maintenance costs.
13
13
  decompositionPrompts:
14
14
  - What questions would you ask the product team?
@@ -22,17 +22,16 @@ professionalQuestions:
22
22
  - Thinks about alternatives and build vs buy decisions
23
23
  expectedDurationMinutes: 15
24
24
  followUps:
25
- - What if the CEO strongly favors this feature but your analysis
26
- suggests otherwise?
25
+ - What if the CEO strongly favors this feature but your analysis suggests
26
+ otherwise?
27
27
  - How would you handle if the revenue estimate turned out to be
28
28
  optimistic?
29
29
 
30
30
  practitioner:
31
31
  - id: biz_pro_pract_decomp_1
32
32
  text:
33
- Your company is considering entering a new market that requires
34
- different compliance requirements. How would you approach the technical
35
- evaluation?
33
+ Your company is considering entering a new market that requires different
34
+ compliance requirements. How would you approach the technical evaluation?
36
35
  context:
37
36
  The new market is healthcare (HIPAA compliance). Current systems handle
38
37
  financial data but were not designed for healthcare. Leadership wants a
@@ -58,50 +57,48 @@ managementQuestions:
58
57
  working:
59
58
  - id: biz_mgmt_work_decomp_1
60
59
  text:
61
- Your engineering team is being asked to support a new business unit that
62
- has different priorities than your current stakeholders. How would you
63
- manage this?
60
+ Your engineering organization needs to reduce costs by 20% while
61
+ maintaining delivery commitments. How would you approach this?
64
62
  context:
65
- The new business unit wants rapid feature delivery for market testing.
66
- Your current stakeholders prioritize stability and compliance. You have
67
- limited capacity to serve both.
63
+ Budget constraints require significant cost reduction. You manage 3 teams
64
+ with 18 engineers total. Current commitments include two major product
65
+ launches in the next quarter.
68
66
  decompositionPrompts:
69
- - How would you assess the strategic importance of each stakeholder?
70
- - What process would you use to prioritize conflicting demands?
71
- - How would you communicate capacity constraints to leadership?
72
- - What organizational changes might be needed?
67
+ - How would you identify cost reduction opportunities?
68
+ - How would you prioritize cuts while protecting critical work?
69
+ - How would you communicate changes to your teams?
70
+ - How would you ensure commitments are still achievable?
73
71
  lookingFor:
74
- - Escalates appropriately to resolve competing priorities
75
- - Creates transparent prioritization framework
76
- - Considers team capacity and sustainable pace
77
- - Proposes structural solutions rather than just working harder
72
+ - Analyzes costs systematically (infrastructure, tooling, headcount)
73
+ - Protects high-value work while cutting low-impact activities
74
+ - Communicates transparently with teams about constraints
75
+ - Renegotiates scope or timelines where necessary
78
76
  expectedDurationMinutes: 15
79
77
  followUps:
80
- - What if the new business unit's executive has more organizational
81
- power?
82
- - How would you handle if your team felt stretched between demands?
78
+ - What if leadership insists on no headcount changes but still needs 20% savings?
79
+ - How would you handle if key team members leave due to uncertainty?
83
80
 
84
81
  practitioner:
85
82
  - id: biz_mgmt_pract_decomp_1
86
83
  text:
87
- Leadership wants to build in-house capability for a technology area
88
- currently handled by vendors. How would you evaluate and plan this
89
- transition?
84
+ The board is considering a major acquisition that would double your
85
+ engineering organization. How would you evaluate the technical due
86
+ diligence and integration plan?
90
87
  context:
91
- The company spends $2M annually on a third-party data analytics
92
- platform. Building in-house would require hiring 4 specialists and 18
93
- months of development. Leadership wants your recommendation.
88
+ The target company has 100 engineers, different tech stack, and overlapping
89
+ product lines. You have 6 weeks for due diligence and need to present
90
+ integration risks and synergies to the board.
94
91
  decompositionPrompts:
95
- - What factors would drive your build vs buy recommendation?
96
- - How would you structure the hiring and team formation?
97
- - What risks would you highlight to leadership?
98
- - How would you phase the transition to minimize disruption?
92
+ - What technical areas would you prioritize in due diligence?
93
+ - How would you assess organizational and cultural compatibility?
94
+ - What integration models would you consider?
95
+ - How would you quantify risks and synergies for the board?
99
96
  lookingFor:
100
- - Evaluates total cost of ownership including hiring and retention
101
- - Considers organizational capability development
102
- - Plans for knowledge transfer and vendor relationship management
103
- - Structures decision with clear criteria and milestones
97
+ - Evaluates architecture, tech debt, and platform compatibility
98
+ - Assesses talent retention risk and cultural differences
99
+ - Proposes realistic integration timeline and approach
100
+ - Presents findings with clear decision criteria for leadership
104
101
  expectedDurationMinutes: 15
105
102
  followUps:
106
- - What if you couldn't hire the specialists needed?
107
- - How would you handle if the vendor relationship became adversarial?
103
+ - What if the acquisition goes through despite your concerns?
104
+ - How would you handle if the target's best engineers leave post-acquisition?
package/examples/questions/capabilities/delivery.yaml CHANGED
@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@ professionalQuestions:
13
13
  - What information would you need to gather first?
14
14
  - How would you break down the technical implementation?
15
15
  - What are the biggest risks and how would you mitigate them?
16
+ - How would AI tools change your approach to building this faster?
16
17
  - How would you prioritize if you had only 3 weeks instead?
17
18
  lookingFor:
18
19
  - Asks clarifying questions about requirements before diving in
@@ -22,8 +23,7 @@ professionalQuestions:
22
23
  - Thinks about scalability and performance constraints
23
24
  expectedDurationMinutes: 15
24
25
  followUps:
25
- - What would you do differently if their data was in 5 different
26
- systems?
26
+ - What would you do differently if their data was in 5 different systems?
27
27
  - How would you handle if a key team member left mid-project?
28
28
 
29
29
  practitioner:
@@ -54,51 +54,47 @@ managementQuestions:
54
54
  working:
55
55
  - id: del_mgmt_work_decomp_1
56
56
  text:
57
- Your team has committed to delivering a major feature, but halfway
58
- through the sprint you realize the scope was underestimated. How would
59
- you handle this?
57
+ A critical project is at risk of missing its deadline, and stakeholders
58
+ are escalating. How would you assess and address the situation?
60
59
  context:
61
- The feature was estimated at 2 weeks but will likely take 4 weeks. The
62
- client has a marketing launch planned around the original date. Your
63
- team has 5 engineers.
60
+ The project was planned for 8 weeks but is now in week 6 with 40% of
61
+ scope remaining. The team of 5 engineers reports blockers from another
62
+ team. The business committed the date to a major customer.
64
63
  decompositionPrompts:
65
- - How would you communicate the delay to stakeholders?
66
- - What options would you present for moving forward?
67
- - How would you support your team through this situation?
68
- - What would you change to prevent this in the future?
64
+ - How would you assess the true state of the project?
65
+ - What options would you present to stakeholders?
66
+ - How would you protect the team while managing expectations?
67
+ - How would you prevent this situation in future projects?
69
68
  lookingFor:
70
- - Communicates early and transparently with stakeholders
71
- - Presents options rather than just problems
72
- - Protects team from blame while addressing root causes
73
- - Focuses on learning and process improvement
69
+ - Gets accurate assessment from team without blame
70
+ - Presents realistic options with trade-offs (scope, time, resources)
71
+ - Manages stakeholder expectations transparently
72
+ - Addresses systemic issues (estimation, dependencies, communication)
74
73
  expectedDurationMinutes: 15
75
74
  followUps:
76
- - What if the stakeholder insists on the original date?
77
- - How would you handle if this was the third time this quarter scope was
78
- underestimated?
75
+ - What if leadership insists the original date cannot move?
76
+ - How would you handle if the blocking team is unresponsive?
79
77
 
80
78
  practitioner:
81
79
  - id: del_mgmt_pract_decomp_1
82
80
  text:
83
- You're leading a cross-functional initiative involving three teams with
84
- different managers, timelines, and priorities. How would you coordinate
85
- delivery?
81
+ You're responsible for coordinating a major platform initiative across
82
+ 4 engineering teams. How would you structure the delivery?
86
83
  context:
87
- The initiative is a platform modernization requiring backend, frontend,
88
- and infrastructure teams. Each team has their own roadmap commitments.
89
- Executive sponsorship is strong but day-to-day coordination is
90
- challenging.
84
+ The initiative is a 12-month platform modernization affecting all products.
85
+ Teams have different managers, priorities, and technical preferences.
86
+ Executive sponsorship is strong but teams are skeptical.
91
87
  decompositionPrompts:
92
- - How would you establish governance and decision-making?
93
- - What coordination mechanisms would you put in place?
94
- - How would you handle conflicts between team priorities?
95
- - How would you maintain momentum and visibility?
88
+ - How would you establish alignment across teams?
89
+ - What governance and coordination mechanisms would you put in place?
90
+ - How would you handle competing priorities between teams?
91
+ - How would you track and communicate progress to executives?
96
92
  lookingFor:
97
- - Creates clear accountability and escalation paths
98
- - Establishes regular coordination touchpoints
99
- - Negotiates with peer managers for alignment
100
- - Uses visibility and reporting to maintain executive support
93
+ - Creates clear roles, responsibilities, and decision rights
94
+ - Establishes lightweight coordination that doesn't slow teams
95
+ - Manages dependencies and resolves conflicts across teams
96
+ - Provides executive visibility without micromanagement
101
97
  expectedDurationMinutes: 15
102
98
  followUps:
103
- - What if one team consistently missed their commitments?
104
- - How would you handle if executive sponsorship weakened mid-project?
99
+ - What if one team's manager disagrees with the overall approach?
100
+ - How would you handle if the initiative loses executive sponsorship?
package/examples/questions/capabilities/people.yaml CHANGED
@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@ professionalQuestions:
13
13
  decompositionPrompts:
14
14
  - What would the first week look like vs the first month?
15
15
  - How would you balance their learning with team productivity?
16
+ - How would AI tools accelerate their ramp-up on the new stack?
16
17
  - What pairing or mentoring structure would you set up?
17
18
  - How would you measure whether onboarding is successful?
18
19
  lookingFor:
@@ -28,9 +29,9 @@ professionalQuestions:
28
29
  practitioner:
29
30
  - id: ppl_pro_pract_decomp_1
30
31
  text:
31
- Two senior engineers on your team have conflicting views on the
32
- technical direction. This is affecting team morale and velocity. How do
33
- you address it?
32
+ Two senior engineers on your team have conflicting views on the technical
33
+ direction. This is affecting team morale and velocity. How do you address
34
+ it?
34
35
  context:
35
36
  One wants to adopt a new framework for better developer experience. The
36
37
  other wants to stick with the current stack for stability. Both are high
@@ -38,8 +39,7 @@ professionalQuestions:
38
39
  decompositionPrompts:
39
40
  - How would you understand the root cause of the conflict?
40
41
  - What process would you use to reach a decision?
41
- - How would you maintain both engineers' engagement regardless of
42
- outcome?
42
+ - How would you maintain both engineers' engagement regardless of outcome?
43
43
  - What would you do if the conflict persists after a decision?
44
44
  lookingFor:
45
45
  - Separates technical disagreement from interpersonal conflict
@@ -48,57 +48,54 @@ professionalQuestions:
48
48
  - Plans for ongoing relationship management
49
49
  expectedDurationMinutes: 15
50
50
  followUps:
51
- - What if one engineer threatens to leave if their approach isn't
52
- chosen?
53
- - How would you handle if this pattern repeats with the same
54
- individuals?
51
+ - What if one engineer threatens to leave if their approach isn't chosen?
52
+ - How would you handle if this pattern repeats with the same individuals?
55
53
 
56
54
  managementQuestions:
57
55
  working:
58
56
  - id: ppl_mgmt_work_decomp_1
59
57
  text:
60
- One of your engineers has been underperforming for the past two months.
61
- They were previously a strong contributor. How would you approach this?
58
+ One of your team members is consistently underperforming despite multiple
59
+ feedback conversations. How would you handle this situation?
62
60
  context:
63
- Their code quality has declined, they've missed two sprint commitments,
64
- and other team members have started picking up slack. They haven't
65
- mentioned any issues proactively.
61
+ The engineer has been on the team for 8 months. They meet basic
62
+ expectations but are not growing. Peers are frustrated with carrying
63
+ extra load. You've had 3 feedback conversations with limited improvement.
66
64
  decompositionPrompts:
67
- - How would you prepare for a conversation with them?
68
- - What would you try to understand about the situation?
69
- - How would you structure support and accountability?
70
- - What timeline and milestones would you set?
65
+ - How would you assess whether this is a skill, will, or fit issue?
66
+ - What performance improvement approach would you take?
67
+ - How would you manage the impact on the rest of the team?
68
+ - What decision criteria would you use for next steps?
71
69
  lookingFor:
72
- - Approaches with curiosity rather than assumptions
73
- - Considers personal and external factors
74
- - Creates clear expectations with support plan
75
- - Documents appropriately while maintaining trust
70
+ - Diagnoses root cause before choosing intervention
71
+ - Creates clear, measurable improvement plan with timeline
72
+ - Manages team dynamics while addressing individual performance
73
+ - Prepares for multiple outcomes including separation
76
74
  expectedDurationMinutes: 15
77
75
  followUps:
78
- - What if they revealed they're dealing with a personal crisis?
79
- - How would you handle if there was no improvement after one month?
76
+ - What if the engineer claims the expectations are unfair?
77
+ - How would you handle if the team wants you to act faster?
80
78
 
81
79
  practitioner:
82
80
  - id: ppl_mgmt_pract_decomp_1
83
81
  text:
84
- Your organization is going through a restructuring that will affect your
85
- team's composition. Some team members may be moved to other teams or
86
- laid off. How do you navigate this with your team?
82
+ You need to grow your engineering organization from 25 to 50 engineers
83
+ over the next year. How would you approach this scaling challenge?
87
84
  context:
88
- Leadership has shared preliminary plans with managers. Final decisions
89
- are two weeks away. Rumors are starting to circulate. Your team has 8
90
- members, 3 of whom may be affected.
85
+ The company has secured Series B funding. Current team is strong but
86
+ has no formal career ladders or management structure. You're the only
87
+ engineering manager reporting to the CTO.
91
88
  decompositionPrompts:
92
- - How would you communicate with your team during uncertainty?
93
- - How would you advocate for your team members with leadership?
94
- - How would you support those who are affected?
95
- - How would you maintain team function during the transition?
89
+ - How would you structure the hiring plan and timeline?
90
+ - What organizational structure would you build?
91
+ - How would you develop management capacity?
92
+ - How would you preserve culture while scaling?
96
93
  lookingFor:
97
- - Balances transparency with appropriate confidentiality
98
- - Advocates for team while aligning with organizational needs
99
- - Provides emotional support during uncertainty
100
- - Maintains team effectiveness through transition
94
+ - Creates phased hiring plan with clear milestones
95
+ - Designs org structure that scales (spans of control, team topology)
96
+ - Develops managers from within and hires experienced managers
97
+ - Explicitly addresses culture preservation and evolution
101
98
  expectedDurationMinutes: 15
102
99
  followUps:
103
- - What if you disagreed with leadership's decisions about your team?
104
- - How would you handle if remaining team members had survivor's guilt?
100
+ - What if you can't find enough quality candidates?
101
+ - How would you handle if existing senior ICs don't want to become managers?
package/examples/questions/capabilities/reliability.yaml CHANGED
@@ -30,12 +30,10 @@ professionalQuestions:
30
30
  - id: rel_pro_pract_decomp_1
31
31
  text:
32
32
  You're designing the disaster recovery strategy for a system that
33
- processes customer financial transactions. Walk me through your
34
- approach.
33
+ processes customer financial transactions. Walk me through your approach.
35
34
  context:
36
- The system handles $10M in daily transactions, uses AWS in us-east-1,
37
- and currently has no cross-region capability. Budget for DR is $50K
38
- annual.
35
+ The system handles $10M in daily transactions, uses AWS in us-east-1, and
36
+ currently has no cross-region capability. Budget for DR is $50K annual.
39
37
  decompositionPrompts:
40
38
  - What are the key requirements you need to establish first?
41
39
  - How would you structure the technical options analysis?
@@ -48,56 +46,55 @@ professionalQuestions:
48
46
  - Plans for regular testing and runbook maintenance
49
47
  expectedDurationMinutes: 15
50
48
  followUps:
51
- - What would you do if a regional outage happened before DR was
52
- complete?
49
+ - What would you do if a regional outage happened before DR was complete?
53
50
  - How would you handle if the $50K budget was cut in half?
54
51
 
55
52
  managementQuestions:
56
53
  working:
57
54
  - id: rel_mgmt_work_decomp_1
58
55
  text:
59
- Your team's on-call rotation is burning people out. Three engineers have
60
- complained about being paged too frequently. How would you address this?
56
+ Your on-call engineers are burning out due to frequent pages and
57
+ incident response. How would you improve the situation?
61
58
  context:
62
- The team of 6 handles on-call for 3 services. Page volume is 40 per
63
- week, with 60% being false alarms or low-priority. Two engineers are
64
- considering leaving due to on-call burden.
59
+ The team is paged an average of 5 times per week outside business hours.
60
+ Two engineers have asked to leave on-call rotation. Incident response
61
+ often requires escalation because documentation is lacking.
65
62
  decompositionPrompts:
66
- - How would you assess the current on-call health?
67
- - What changes would you prioritize to reduce burden?
68
- - How would you balance immediate relief with long-term fixes?
69
- - How would you rebuild team trust around on-call?
63
+ - How would you analyze the current on-call burden?
64
+ - What changes to the on-call structure would you consider?
65
+ - How would you reduce incident frequency and impact?
66
+ - How would you sustain these improvements over time?
70
67
  lookingFor:
71
- - Takes retention risk seriously
72
- - Analyzes page sources to prioritize fixes
73
- - Considers short-term accommodations while fixing root causes
74
- - Involves team in designing sustainable solutions
68
+ - Analyzes incidents to identify patterns and preventable pages
69
+ - Considers rotation structure, compensation, and workload distribution
70
+ - Invests in runbooks, automation, and self-healing
71
+ - Creates sustainable practices rather than short-term fixes
75
72
  expectedDurationMinutes: 15
76
73
  followUps:
77
- - What if you couldn't reduce page volume quickly?
78
- - How would you handle if leadership wanted to add a fourth service?
74
+ - What if leadership says there's no budget for additional on-call support?
75
+ - How would you handle if the most experienced engineers refuse on-call?
79
76
 
80
77
  practitioner:
81
78
  - id: rel_mgmt_pract_decomp_1
82
79
  text:
83
- After a major incident, your team's postmortem revealed significant
84
- process and communication failures. How would you drive organizational
85
- improvements?
80
+ Your organization has grown to 20 services owned by different teams
81
+ but has no consistent approach to reliability. How would you establish
82
+ reliability practices at scale?
86
83
  context:
87
- The incident lasted 4 hours and impacted $500K in transactions. Root
88
- causes included unclear escalation paths, lack of runbooks, and poor
89
- cross-team communication. Multiple teams were involved.
84
+ Some teams have mature SLOs and incident response, others don't.
85
+ Recent cross-team incidents took too long to resolve due to unclear
86
+ ownership. Leadership wants to improve reliability organization-wide.
90
87
  decompositionPrompts:
91
- - How would you prioritize the improvements identified?
92
- - How would you build consensus across teams and leadership?
93
- - What governance would you establish to ensure follow-through?
94
- - How would you measure whether improvements are working?
88
+ - How would you assess current reliability maturity across teams?
89
+ - What standards and practices would you establish?
90
+ - How would you drive adoption across teams with different contexts?
91
+ - How would you coordinate reliability during cross-team incidents?
95
92
  lookingFor:
96
- - Focuses on systemic issues rather than individual blame
97
- - Creates cross-functional alignment on improvements
98
- - Establishes accountability for action items
99
- - Builds culture of continuous reliability improvement
93
+ - Creates maturity model to meet teams where they are
94
+ - Establishes minimum standards while allowing team flexibility
95
+ - Provides enablement (tooling, templates) alongside requirements
96
+ - Defines clear escalation and coordination for cross-team issues
100
97
  expectedDurationMinutes: 15
101
98
  followUps:
102
- - What if other teams resisted changes to their processes?
103
- - How would you handle pressure to move on without implementing fixes?
99
+ - What if teams resist reliability requirements as overhead?
100
+ - How would you handle if different teams have conflicting SLO definitions?
package/examples/questions/capabilities/scale.yaml CHANGED
@@ -8,8 +8,8 @@ professionalQuestions:
8
8
  1000 RPS in 6 months due to a new partnership. How would you approach
9
9
  this?
10
10
  context:
11
- The API is a monolithic Node.js application backed by PostgreSQL.
12
- Response time P99 is currently 200ms and must stay under 500ms.
11
+ The API is a monolithic Node.js application backed by PostgreSQL. Response
12
+ time P99 is currently 200ms and must stay under 500ms.
13
13
  decompositionPrompts:
14
14
  - What would you need to measure and understand first?
15
15
  - How would you identify the scaling bottlenecks?
@@ -23,8 +23,7 @@ professionalQuestions:
23
23
  expectedDurationMinutes: 15
24
24
  followUps:
25
25
  - What if the partnership deal accelerated and you had only 3 months?
26
- - How would you handle if the new load had very different access
27
- patterns?
26
+ - How would you handle if the new load had very different access patterns?
28
27
 
29
28
  practitioner:
30
29
  - id: scl_pro_pract_decomp_1
@@ -55,49 +54,49 @@ managementQuestions:
55
54
  working:
56
55
  - id: scl_mgmt_work_decomp_1
57
56
  text:
58
- Your team's codebase has grown significantly and new engineers are
59
- taking much longer to become productive. How would you address this?
57
+ Your team is responsible for a system that needs to scale significantly,
58
+ but you don't have dedicated infrastructure expertise. How would you
59
+ build this capability?
60
60
  context:
61
- Onboarding time has increased from 2 weeks to 6 weeks. The codebase has
62
- 300K lines of code with limited documentation. You're planning to hire 3
63
- more engineers this quarter.
61
+ The system needs to 10x in capacity over the next year. Your team of
62
+ 6 engineers has strong application development skills but limited
63
+ infrastructure and performance engineering experience.
64
64
  decompositionPrompts:
65
- - How would you assess what's causing the onboarding slowdown?
66
- - What investments would you prioritize to improve the situation?
67
- - How would you balance documentation work with feature delivery?
68
- - How would you measure improvement over time?
65
+ - How would you assess your team's current capabilities and gaps?
66
+ - What strategy would you use to build the needed expertise?
67
+ - How would you manage the risk during the scaling effort?
68
+ - How would you balance learning with delivery commitments?
69
69
  lookingFor:
70
- - Investigates root causes systematically
71
- - Considers documentation, tooling, and mentorship investments
72
- - Creates sustainable approach that doesn't overburden existing team
73
- - Sets concrete onboarding time targets
70
+ - Honestly assesses capability gaps without blame
71
+ - Considers multiple approaches (hire, train, partner, outsource)
72
+ - Creates risk mitigation plan for capability building period
73
+ - Protects learning time while meeting business needs
74
74
  expectedDurationMinutes: 15
75
75
  followUps:
76
- - What if senior engineers resisted taking time for documentation?
77
- - How would you handle pressure to start new hires on features
78
- immediately?
76
+ - What if you can't hire and must develop expertise internally?
77
+ - How would you handle if early scaling efforts fail?
79
78
 
80
79
  practitioner:
81
80
  - id: scl_mgmt_pract_decomp_1
82
81
  text:
83
- Your organization wants to scale from 3 engineering teams to 8 teams
84
- over the next year. You've been asked to help plan the team structure
85
- and architecture evolution. How would you approach this?
82
+ Your organization's infrastructure costs have grown faster than revenue,
83
+ and leadership wants a 30% cost reduction while maintaining performance.
84
+ How would you approach this?
86
85
  context:
87
- Current teams are organized by layer (frontend, backend,
88
- infrastructure). The product is a B2B SaaS platform with 5 major feature
89
- areas. Current architecture is a monolith with some extracted services.
86
+ Current cloud spend is $2M annually across 15 teams. Some services are
87
+ over-provisioned, others have inefficient architectures. Teams have
88
+ autonomy over their infrastructure but no accountability for costs.
90
89
  decompositionPrompts:
91
- - What factors would drive your team topology recommendations?
92
- - How would you align architecture changes with team growth?
93
- - What challenges do you anticipate and how would you mitigate them?
94
- - How would you phase the transition?
90
+ - How would you analyze current spend and identify opportunities?
91
+ - What governance changes would you propose?
92
+ - How would you drive cost consciousness across teams?
93
+ - How would you ensure cost reduction doesn't impact performance?
95
94
  lookingFor:
96
- - Considers domain-driven team boundaries
97
- - Aligns architecture evolution with organizational design
98
- - Plans for communication overhead and coordination costs
99
- - Anticipates cultural and process challenges of rapid growth
95
+ - Creates visibility into costs at service and team level
96
+ - Proposes accountability model while respecting team autonomy
97
+ - Identifies both quick wins and architectural improvements
98
+ - Establishes guardrails to prevent performance regression
100
99
  expectedDurationMinutes: 15
101
100
  followUps:
102
- - What if leadership wanted to move faster than you recommended?
103
- - How would you handle if existing teams resisted reorganization?
101
+ - What if teams push back on cost accountability?
102
+ - How would you handle if major cost savings require significant refactoring?