The decomposition method

The decomposition round hands you a deliberately under-specified enterprise problem and grades how you scope it, not whether you solve it. There is a repeatable method and running it visibly is the whole point.

A representative prompt: "A customer has a 1M-line monolith on a deprecated framework and wants off it. Where do you start?" The candidate who starts describing a codemod has lost. The one who runs the five steps below, out loud, has won before they write any code.

1. 1Clarify the goal. Restate the problem in your words and confirm the real objective. Is the win getting off the deprecated framework or is it stopping the security CVEs that framework keeps generating? Those lead to different work.
2. 2Identify stakeholders and metrics. Name who owns the code, who approves the migration and who feels the pain. Pin a success metric you both agree on: "95% of files migrated with green CI and zero behavior regressions."
3. 3Map the inputs. What's the framework boundary, the test coverage, the CI setup, the code access? Coverage especially decides whether you can move fast or have to build a safety net first.
4. 4Decompose into subproblems. Break the monolith migration into independently shippable slices: detect usages, transform one module, verify, roll out. Each slice has its own risk and value.
5. 5Propose a walking-skeleton MVP, then iterate. Pick the thinnest slice that proves the whole pipeline works end-to-end, ship it, learn and expand. Make explicit that this is iteration one, not the finished system.