Think Holistically

Technical- you need to consider things like threading models, data flow data structure, testability, security , user interface. A solution is only as strong as its weakest link. If the UI is great but the system is not stable, you will fail. If the system scales well but the security is flawed,  you will fail.

Team - You have to understand the limitations and capabilities of your teams and thier structure. If everybody knows Cobol, maybe Rails is not a good option. if the teams are spread out geographically, you need to make sure you partition the system into chunks that will allow them to progress independently as possible.

Managerial - brings to the forefront things like "What's the budget for the project?", "How much time do we have?" so can you really plan on using a rule engine if it eats 80% of your budget (maybe ?). Can you plan a cool piece of infrastructure if it will take four months to build?

Esoteric - Sometimes you even need to consider the less than common stuff. There aren't general examples here since its, well, esoteric. A couple of examples I've seen include a project where we had to see how much power the hardware we use needs (since it was to be deployed on a truck) or on another project where we designed a multi-monitor UI we had to figure out if it is better to design the UI for side-by-side or one atop the other