Do you mean rewrite? You're acting as though refactoring is a process that involves destroying bad code and rewriting it from scratch. It's not. Refactoring is

Do you mean rewrite? You're acting as though refactoring is a process that involves destroying bad code and rewriting it from scratch. It's not. Refactoring is usually the modification of existing code while maintaining existing functionality in order to make the code easier to maintain and reason about for future developers. Furthermore, if you're given points for refactoring (as you should be) your velocity is very unlikely to go down in my opinion. I will say that many teams and managers do not do this, but that's because they're poor managers. If you have tests in place you will cause fewer bugs by refactoring. If you don't you will still create a few bugs as you refactor. But imo, fixing the bugs created by refactoring is just... part of refactoring. If that means the task requires an even higher number of points, so be it. As a manager, there's no point in forcing the team to accept a reality they know isn't possible. It's not beneficial for anyone.