Most people think that "failover is essentially automatic and magical." ☛ Michael Nygard's

 Depending on the detection and notification, there can be quite a delay before failover is initiated at all. (I once spoke with a retailer whose primary notification mechanism seemed to be the Marketing VP's wife.)
 
via  Wide Awake Developers Blog by Michael Nygard

I come from a systems management and operations background.  On a recent consulting engagement, I asked the tech leads what tools they used to monitor their production systems?  "None".  Well, I asked, how do you know when there is a production problem?  "The user calls us!"

UmlAsSketchm-From the author of "UML Distilled"

The essence of sketching is selectivity. With forward sketching you rough out some issues in code you are about to write, usually discussing them with a group of people with your team. Your aim is to use the sketches to help communicate ideas and alternatives about what you're about to do. You don't talk about all the code you are going to work on, just important issues that you want to run past your colleagues first, or sections of the design that you want to visualize before you begin programming.

A design is complete not when there is nothing more to add but rather... (@secretGeek)

secretGeek (@secretGeek):
3/30/10 6:00 AM
A design is complete not when there is nothing more to add but rather when the client's wallet has nothing left to remove.

[Sent from my iPhone 3GS]

"Requirements traceability - The Holy Grail"... - by Michael Stal: Requirements traceability – The Holy Grail

The big secret is requirements traceability. Each and every architectural decision must be strongly derived from forces (i.e., requirements and risks). This also helps to keep the architecture simple, expressive and balanced, because this way we can get rid of all these design pearls smart developers and architects typically invent.