Book excerpt: This indispensable new handbook focuses on 12 specific skills every software architect needs to succeed: skills involved in becoming a superior technologist and an outstanding technical champion in your organization. Focuses on three sets of skills that will have the greatest impact on your ability to succeed and ascend: Product Development Skills: Partnership, Discovery, Modeling, Leverage, and Estimating Oversight Skills: Platform/Project Oversight, Capital Planning, and Risk Management Visionary Skills: Road Mapping, Researching, Trend Awareness, and Branding Unlike most software architecture guides, Hendricken's books place real-world practice in the context of the development organization and the business, and help you blend the optimal mix of both hard and soft skills. Both valuable initial instruction and a lasting reference, this guide will can help you earn and succeed in your next software architecture role -- in any organization, at any level.