When recruiting personnel for your project, don't underestimate the importance of teamwork and communication. The best software architect becomes a poor asset if he or she is unable to communicate, convince, listen, and compromise.
Communication breakdowns can occur at any process level. The effects of these problems are not independent. For instance, fluctuating requirements increase a development team's need for communication both with customers and with the project's other teams.
Exceptional architects are skilled at communicating their technical vision to other project members. They usually possess exceptional communication skills and often spend much of their time educating others about the application domain and its mapping into computational structures. In fact, much of their design work is accomplished while interacting with others. The integrative role of an exceptional designer compounds itself. This happens because those perceived as most knowledgeable will become communication focal points, providing them more knowledge about the system to integrate into a more comprehensive model.
Reference:
Curtis, B., Krasner, H., and Iscoe, N., "A Field Study of the Software Design Process for Large Systems," Communications of the ACM, November 1988.
