[mbrodersen]

That’s a straw man argument. Of course nobody will allocate 100% of their time to clean things up instead of delivering features. That’s the path to bankruptcy. What you should do is to allocate (say) 10% to improving the system. For example, on a team of 10 software engineers allocate one to refactor/improve/simplify/remove pain from the process itself. It will pay itself back many times over in long term because of improved productivity. And even better: take turns. Each developer will get 10% of their time to improve/speed up the things that are slowing them down or is painful/frustrating. The morale boost and increased productivity is worth much more than the time spent.