The Five Step Method for Scenario Based Questions
When applying the five‑step method to scenario‑based questions, you change how you read the stem. The stem contains a story in which conditions are stated. The story provides context, and the conditions become the essential information.
Let’s look at a scenario:
Jordan is a junior Linux administrator responsible for maintaining several development servers. Throughout the day, one of the servers has been responding slowly, and several developers have reported delays when running builds. When Jordan logs in, he sees system activity that confirms the server is under heavy load. Jordon needs to determine the best way to solve the problem. Which utility would be the best choice for Jordan to diagnose the server performance issue?”
- A. top
- B. vmstat
- C. iostat
- D. uptime
The answer is A. top
The story describes context. In our case we learn that Jordon is an administrator that maintains several servers. This information has no bearing on the solution so discard it.
The qualifier best tells us that we must select the most effective option for solving the problem. It also indicates that this is a single-answer question, as only one option can be the best solution.
The task is implied by the qualifier best. If we restate the problem we see we must identify the best solution.
The essential information tells us server is responding slowly, developers are experiencing delays, and the system is under heavy load. Since the essential information describes multiple issues we must find one solution that will help us evaluate all these conditions.
While the other utilities provide some system information, the top command provides all of the information we require and is therefore the best command for diagnosing the problem.