Reflection Questions

These questions are most useful when answered in writing before a team discussion, or when used as a retrospective prompt after a decision has been made.

1. Think of the last system you inherited or debugged without full context. What was your traversal strategy? How did it serve you?
2. If a new technical leader joined your team tomorrow, how long would it take them to pass the seven-question test on your main system? What would block them?
3. Where in your system is the archetype violated? What was the tradeoff that produced the violation?
4. What observability gap in your system would most slow down a competent engineer reading it under pressure at 2am?

Design: Choose a system your organisation operates that no single engineer fully understands. Write a system reading guide — using F6 (archetype identification) and F5 (seven review questions in order) — that would allow a competent engineer unfamiliar with the system to form a useful hypothesis within 90 minutes during an active incident. Identify what observability investments are required to make the guide reliable.