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Grading Rubric

Criterion Strong (3) Adequate (2) Weak (1)
Identified misleading symptom Recognized that healthy canary metrics do not guarantee correct routing; tested the actual response data Checked canary metrics, then tested the application directly and found correct prices Assumed the canary code had a pricing bug; spent time reviewing v4.2.0 code diff
Found root cause in networking domain Discovered the canary pod was in the wholesale-pricing-api endpoints due to label mismatch Found the endpoint overlap but not the label cause Assumed it was an Ingress configuration or traffic splitting issue
Remediated in kubernetes domain Fixed the pod labels, updated the deployment template, added label validation to CI Fixed the labels but did not add CI validation or update the template Rolled back the canary without fixing the underlying label issue
Cross-domain thinking Explained the full chain: label copy-paste error -> endpoint contamination -> pricing data leak -> undetected by standard canary metrics Acknowledged the label/endpoint relationship but missed the CI/template angle Treated it as a single-domain deployment or application bug

Prerequisite Topic Packs

  • progressive-delivery — needed for Domain A investigation (canary deployments, traffic splitting, Flagger)
  • k8s-services-and-ingress — needed for Domain B root cause (Service selectors, endpoints, Ingress routing)
  • k8s-networking — needed for Domain B (label matching, endpoint discovery)
  • k8s-ops — needed for Domain C remediation (deployment templates, pod labels)
  • cicd — needed for Domain C (CI pipeline validation, deployment template checks)