Fiction and non-fiction writers have been struggling with these issues long before software was a concept. Their solution: "writing is re-writing". I didn't me

Fiction and non-fiction writers have been struggling with these issues long before software was a concept. Their solution: "writing is re-writing". I didn't mean to imply a dichotomy. I don't think an intense planning phase up front solves the problem. But feature-sprints tend to crowd out refactor-sprints because of the demands from above for new features. Downtime working on backend stuff is not perceived by the customer as anything benefiting them. But here, the backend is a codebase no one enjoys working with and the customer is the C-suite expecting X features this month because X or X-1 features were pushed last month.