A long time ago I came up with an acronym that's served me well as a consultant who has to bounce from one customer to the next and run through interview gauntl

A long time ago I came up with an acronym that's served me well as a consultant who has to bounce from one customer to the next and run through interview gauntlets of all types: RACEMOORES: R: Restate with sample inputs/outputs/diagrams A: Assumptions ~ scale of inputs, uniqueness, range, variable parameters now and in the future C: Complexity: runtime complexity, space complexity, etc E: Edge cases M: Maintainability O: Overflow O: Optimizations R: Refactoring - DRY / SOLID / etc E: Extensibility S: Scalability I use the "memory palace" heuristic to guide me through this, where each letter is a naked dude waving a flag on a racetrack I vividly remember from Gran Turismo back in the day. Absurdity helps it stick . I start every interview by writing this on the board and checking off the letters as I run through them. I usually stick another "O" in there for "Other stakeholders", depending on the gig. This happens to work nicely when guiding/assessing interviewees through technical scenarios as well.