6 exercises on verb / noun / adjective forms of essential IT terms. Read the context sentence — then choose the correct word form that fits the blank.
Word families covered in this set
deploy → deployment → deployable → redeploy
reproduce → reproducible → reproduction steps
maintain → maintainability → maintainable
configure → configuration → misconfiguration
autonomous → autonomy → autonomously
validate → validation → validator → valid/invalid
0 / 6 completed
1 / 6
A developer writes: "We need to _____ the API before the next sprint — the current endpoint structure is causing confusion downstream."
Which form of the word DEPLOY fits this blank?
Redeploy is the correct verb here. The sentence needs a verb (the team needs to do something to the API).
The DEPLOY word family: • deploy (v.) — "We deploy new releases every Friday." • redeploy (v.) — deploy again, usually after a fix or change • deployment (n.) — "The deployment took 12 minutes." / "A production deployment" • deployable (adj.) — "The build is deployable — all tests passed." • deployer (n.) — the person or tool that deploys (less common, usually a tool name)
In everyday IT speech: "We triggered a deployment." (noun) "Is this branch deployable?" (adjective — safe to ship?) "Let's redeploy the service to pick up the config change." (verb — do it again) "We need to deploy the hotfix immediately." (verb — basic form)
2 / 6
A QA engineer says: "The bug is _____ — I can reproduce it every time with the same steps."
Which form of the word REPRODUCE fits?
Reproducible is the adjective form: the bug can be reproduced. This is one of the most important words in QA English.
The REPRODUCE word family in QA: • reproduce (v.) — "Can you reproduce this bug?" / "I cannot reproduce the issue." • reproducible (adj.) — "The crash is reproducible in Chrome 120 on macOS." (key for bug reports) • non-reproducible (adj.) — "The issue appears to be non-reproducible — we've logged it and marked as low priority." • reproduction steps (n.) — "Add reproduction steps to the ticket before opening it." • reproducing (gerund/present participle) — "I'm still reproducing the issue."
Bug report template: Every good bug report includes: summary, environment, steps to reproduce, expected result, actual result. The word "reproducible" signals the quality of the report.
3 / 6
The team lead writes in the PR description: "This refactor improves code _____ — modules are now decoupled and can be tested independently."
Which form of the word MAINTAIN fits?
Maintainability (noun) — the quality of being easy to maintain, understand, and modify. It's a key non-functional requirement alongside scalability and reliability.
The MAINTAIN word family: • maintain (v.) — "We maintain three production services." • maintainer (n.) — "She's the maintainer of the open-source repo." (especially in OSS) • maintenance (n.) — "Scheduled maintenance on Sunday 2–4 AM." / "Code maintenance" • maintainable (adj.) — "Is this architecture maintainable long-term?" • maintainability (n.) — "Maintainability is a core engineering value." (abstract quality)
Practical usage: "The codebase is hard to maintain." → "The codebase has poor maintainability." Both mean the same thing — the noun form is more formal and often used in architecture discussions.
4 / 6
A DevOps engineer says in a postmortem: "The incident was caused by a misconfigured _____ — the load balancer was routing all traffic to a single node."
Which form of the word CONFIGURE fits?
Configuration (noun) — the settings, parameters, and values that determine how a system behaves.
The CONFIGURE word family: • configure (v.) — "Configure the nginx proxy before deploying." / "Let me configure the environment variables." • configuration (n.) — "The default configuration worked in staging but not production." (very common in DevOps/infra) • misconfigured (adj.) — "A misconfigured firewall rule blocked all outbound traffic." • misconfiguration (n.) — "The outage was due to a misconfiguration in the Kubernetes manifest." • reconfigure (v.) — "We'll need to reconfigure the cluster after the migration." • config (informal n.) — short for configuration, used constantly: "Check the config file", "config change", "bad config"
IaC context: Configuration management tools (Terraform, Ansible, Chef) generate and version configurations as code.
5 / 6
The architect writes in the RFC: "Moving from a monolith to microservices will improve team _____ — each squad can own, deploy, and scale their service independently."
Which form of the word AUTONOMOUS / AUTONOMY fits?
Autonomy (noun) — the ability to act independently, without needing approval or coordination from others. In microservices architecture, team autonomy is one of the primary benefits.
The AUTONOMY word family: • autonomy (n.) — "Microservices give teams full deployment autonomy." / "We want team autonomy over our release schedule." • autonomous (adj.) — "An autonomous team" / "Autonomous deployment pipeline" • autonomously (adv.) — "Each service deploys autonomously." (less common in writing)
Why this word matters for architects: Conway's Law says system architecture mirrors team communication structure. Designing for team autonomy means designing for loose coupling — if Team A can deploy without coordinating with Team B, the systems are properly decoupled.
Related vocabulary: • ownership — "Team owns the service end-to-end" • decoupled — "Services are decoupled — changes don't cascade" • independent deployability — being able to deploy without coordinating across teams
6 / 6
A backend developer writes in the PR: "I've added input _____ on all public API endpoints — the service now rejects malformed requests with a 400 status."
Which form of the word VALIDATE fits?
Validation (noun) — the process of checking that data is correct, complete, and in the expected format before processing it.
The VALIDATE word family: • validate (v.) — "The middleware validates the request body before it reaches the handler." • validation (n.) — "Input validation", "schema validation", "data validation" — all common collocations • validator (n.) — a function or class that performs validation: "The email validator rejects addresses without a TLD." • valid (adj.) — "The JWT token is still valid." / "Is this a valid UUID?" • invalid (adj.) — "Invalid credentials" / "Invalid request format" • validated (past participle) — "Once the payload is validated, it's queued for processing."
Input validation in security: The OWASP Top 10 includes injection attacks (SQL injection, XSS) — most of which can be prevented with proper input validation. Validating inputs at system boundaries (API layer, forms) is a first line of defense.