Architecture is a big word (Score 2, Insightful)

Wow, sounds like your a talented guy going places. A few thoughts from the peanut gallery: Many projects have architects but no architecture. Software Architects need to be part systems engineers. A smarter guy than me wrote that 70% of all software defects are requirements based. This means that figuring out what to do can be more important than being a rocking coder. Technical Architects take on the jobs that others may not be able to. Fight the fires that need fighting not what you find personally amusing. Architects never say, "I don't know how to do that, so its not my job to fix it". They say "Let's make a plan and figure this thing out with Bob, and Jane,...". I like to do Horizontal Prototyping early on. Creating a fabric for your less experienced team members to flush out can really help in Distributed Realtime/Communications stuff. (But I'm sure that's not new to anyone). Parallelism is the key to meeting deadlines. Keeping your team members moving can , at some times, be more important than sleep (provided your employer has good / and hopefully free coffee). Performance models are a hard sell, but they can save your butt. Might have to do on your free time. Dale Carnegie wrote that 20% of what you learn is technical, the other 80% is people skills. He was right.