M3.6 module quiz
Ten questions. 80% to pass (8 of 10). Open book, unlimited retakes.
Answers are collapsed under each question. Answer first, then check.
Q1
Budget spend is:
A. Stored in a column and refreshed by a nightly cron
B. Snapshotted daily and served from that snapshot
C. Computed live from cost records on every read
D. Supplied by the cloud provider’s own budget API
Show answer
Correct: C. There is no stored spend column anywhere, so there is nothing to keep in sync and nothing to drift. Threshold notifications still fire from the cron, which reads spend live rather than writing it back.
Q2
A budget can be scoped to:
A. Teams only, since a team is what owns the budget
B. A cloud account, a resource, or a resource group
C. An organisation only, with no sub-scopes
D. A tag key, so any axis can be limited
Show answer
Correct: B. Resolved through a polymorphic scope pair. Multiple budgets can sit on the same underlying data independently, which is what makes a composite hierarchy possible.
Q3
Budgets do not auto-enforce because:
A. The workload causing an overrun is usually the one you least want stopped without a human deciding
B. The API does not support stopping a resource from inside a budget evaluation context at all
C. It would violate SOC 2, which requires human approval
D. Enforcement is planned for a later release of budgets
Show answer
Correct: A. A budget is a conversation trigger. Enforcement is a separate decision with its own escalation path, and auto-enforcement is rarely the right answer.
Q4
The traffic-light signals mean:
A. Green under 50%, yellow between 50 and 90%, red above
B. Green on track, yellow at threshold, red over budget
C. Green approved, yellow pending, red rejected
D. Green actual, yellow forecast, red variance
Show answer
Correct: B. The threshold is configurable per budget, so yellow is defined by the org rather than by a fixed percentage.
Q5
Budget, forecast and alert are:
A. Three views of one underlying number
B. Sequential stages of the same allocation process
C. Provider-specific terms for one thing
D. Three separate concepts to design independently
Show answer
Correct: D. A budget is a target, a forecast is a projection, an alert is a trigger. Conflating them produces a budget that moves whenever the forecast does, which defeats the point of having one.
Q6
An escalation chain that fails usually lacks:
A. Enough thresholds per budget
B. Executive sponsorship for it
C. A named owner and SLA per level
D. Multiple notification channels
Show answer
Correct: C. “Notify the team” is not an owner. Diffuse responsibility is the failure mode the explicit matrix prevents, and it is invisible until the first threshold nobody acts on.
Q7
Raise versus enforce: raising is right when:
A. The team asks for it in review
B. The budget was set too low when it was first agreed
C. The quarter is nearly over anyway
D. The overrun is justified growth rather than waste
Show answer
Correct: D. Most real cases decompose into both: part of the overrun is justified and part is not, and separating them is the actual governance skill.
Q8
Budget definitions are owned by Config while the aggregator:
A. Computes the spend aggregate
B. Stores a duplicate copy of it
C. Owns both sides of the number
D. Is not involved in the read
Show answer
Correct: A. The same split as unit metrics: Config owns the definition, the aggregator computes the aggregate. It is why a budget’s CRUD and its spend come from different services.
Q9
A composite budget hierarchy works because:
A. Budgets nest formally by scope
B. Multiple independent budgets can watch overlapping data
C. Child budgets roll up into the parent automatically
D. The provider enforces the org total
Show answer
Correct: B. An account-level budget and a group-level budget on overlapping resources are both valid and both fire on their own thresholds. Independence is the useful property.
Q10
Virtual-key budget alerts fire at:
A. Thresholds configurable per key
B. On the month boundary
C. 80% and 100%, fixed
D. 90% only
Show answer
Correct: C. Unlike cloud budgets, where the alert threshold is configurable. They ride any org-wide budget subscription, and the gateway’s own rejection remains the hard cap.
What’s next
Back to Budget governance.