[engineerDave]

I never have had a project fail due to it's tech. In my experience, projects rarely fail due to the tech, they fail due to the team and management.

If you get to the point you're referring to, e.g. Twitter having fail whale issues because they built entirely on mostly vanilla Rails, is a good problem to have and one you'll be able to get resources to fix once you get there.

Maybe it's just me but IMO your time would be better spent reading something like Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely or brushing up on your psych 101 concepts. Learn to deal with the irrationality of your team, your customers, and your boss and your life will be a lot less stressful.

Good luck!

[UK-AL]

Architecture isn't really about "tech". But how things are organised.

[magicink81]

These two comments make me think that a careful study of Conway's Law, its implications, and related understanding of people's behavior when organized to work together may actually be the most important knowledge for software architects.

Barry Oshry is one author that has investigated and detailed organizational behavior and developed simplified models that can provide insight and guidance for daily practice and planning. He has multiple books available, I recommend "Seeing Systems". Here's a video recording of a talk covering some of the content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYpO-pK7IFA