That can be said about any cost centre, but you don’t have to drag managers kicking and screaming to get them to buy fire insurance.

Practically what it does is allow the company to keep up velocity and not be distracted putting out fires everywhere.

Of course building features is the team’s entire reason for existing. But there is no advantage to defer refactoring to some later date. The longer you wait the more painful it gets.

Chances are the time never comes, once progress stalls and the company isn’t out of business yet someone will have the brilliant idea to rewrite everything from scratch, which is just lighting money on fire with extra steps.