Architecture has always been a tough sell. Except in rare cases, it's not a feature that makes the front page of the color glossy sales brocures. Even though a failed architecture is deadly, it always seems like a struggle to allocate time and budget to invest there instead of adding more features.
Steve McConnell manages to capture the "pay me now or pay me later" dynamics of architecture far better than I ever was able to in this article about Technical Debt. By recasting a technical subject in terms taken from the Wall Street Journal, he captures the business risk involved here in a way that a CFO can grasp.
If you're an architect, you've got to read this article.