All 33 anti-patterns from the Engineering Standard, in six sections. Sections 1 to 5 apply to every engineer. Section 6 applies to Squad Leads and Department Heads. Every test question comes from this page.
Treating flapping alerts or small errors as normal until they escalate to P1/P2 Section 1, Incident monitoring and response
Missing the 15-minute recovery threshold for P1/P2 because detection takes over 10 minutes Section 1, Incident monitoring and response
Depending on a single hero engineer to handle incidents Section 1, Incident monitoring and response
Alert fatigue: acknowledging but ignoring critical alerts because of noise Section 1, Incident monitoring and response
The same root cause appearing in two or more P1/P2 incidents within 90 days Section 2, Problem management and post-incident analysis
Fixing the symptom (restart the server) without addressing the underlying defect Section 2, Problem management and post-incident analysis
Treating a P1/P2 RCA as paperwork: late, thin on data, no action items Section 2, Problem management and post-incident analysis
Skipping load testing before known peak-traffic events Section 3, Quality assurance, testing and operations
Writing shallow tests that skip edge cases to hit a coverage metric Section 3, Quality assurance, testing and operations
No post-deployment monitoring window, so bugs go unnoticed for hours Section 3, Quality assurance, testing and operations
Leaving flaky, non-deterministic tests unrefactored Section 3, Quality assurance, testing and operations
Serial test execution or a single gatekeeper stretching regression to five days Section 3, Quality assurance, testing and operations
Ignoring small UI/UX defects because they are not labelled P1/P2 Section 3, Quality assurance, testing and operations
Approving a production deployment with known bugs and no risk assessment or sign-off Section 3, Quality assurance, testing and operations
Never updating testing methodology, so the same class of bug keeps leaking Section 3, Quality assurance, testing and operations
Shallow code review, skipped process, or shadow changes with no impact analysis Section 4, Development practices and release management
Deploying large changes on a Friday or before a holiday with no rollback plan or approval Section 4, Development practices and release management
Bundling many changes into one pull request to bypass test gating Section 4, Development practices and release management
Prioritising delivery speed over quality until technical debt runs uncontrolled Section 4, Development practices and release management
Making large changes without a tested rollback procedure Section 4, Development practices and release management
Implementation that does not match the approved design, with no formal validation Section 4, Development practices and release management
Ignoring security reports or merging code with known critical vulnerabilities to hit a deadline Section 5, Security and financial risk management
Hardcoding secrets and credentials in source code or repositories Section 5, Security and financial risk management
Exposing PII through weak access control or careless logging Section 5, Security and financial risk management
Not turning RCA findings into specific, time-boxed action items with named owners Section 6, Leadership accountability
Not verifying corrective actions are complete before redeploying the affected service Section 6, Leadership accountability
Not enforcing change management process within the squad Section 6, Leadership accountability
Not enforcing proper handover when an engineer leaves or changes role Section 6, Leadership accountability
Not keeping regression and automated test suites current with system change Section 6, Leadership accountability
Not running a proper retrospective after a P1/P2, or running one as a formality Section 6, Leadership accountability
Not spreading lessons learned beyond the originating squad Section 6, Leadership accountability
Accepting sprint plans with zero capacity for reliability work after a P1/P2 Section 6, Leadership accountability
Not establishing or enforcing a department-wide change management standard Section 6, Leadership accountability