Honestly, this is pretty straight-forward stuff, and I'm surprised you're getting any argument. If a technologist cannot explain how a proposed implementation i

Honestly, this is pretty straight-forward stuff, and I'm surprised you're getting any argument. If a technologist cannot explain how a proposed implementation is going to provide value to the business, that project is probably better off left alone. Prettier code and better tests don't provide value. But fewer customer-facing P1/P2 tickets provides value. That prettier code and better tests leads to fewer tickets is an implementation detail. Let's put it this way: Netflix has one of the most robust microservice architectures I know of. I promise you will find zero mention of it anywhere on their customer-facing pages. Because that is not the problem that Netflix solves for their customer; they solve a media library and streaming problem. The business is your customer. You need to understand their problems and how you're going to fix them. Everything else is an implementation detail.