It is so often true that the most difficult aspect of a development project are the basic decisions you take at the beginning during the design phase.

Strong architectural design supports a product allowing it to flexibly adapt to support the inevitable changes (after all the only certainties are death, taxes and changes in user requirements). We can help to form the design or architecture into something that can be reviewed more easily using modelling techniques, act as mentors during the design phase, or act as the reviewers to add our experience to the decisions taken.