It’s just like re-factoring heavily interdependent code, except without the advantage of the dependencies being written down
The problem is that the organisational equivalent of ‘later’ is ‘never’. Therefore, if something needs to actually be done, the only time is now.
Yeah but finding, or rather estimating, this optimal is a lot of work, and requires you to have one foot in both camps, and some kind of process/authority to make a decision, and some incentive to make a short term sacrifice for long term gain. That's just not going to happen in a weekly sprint planning, in a company that's aiming for the next quarterly report.
Then in 3 months time the choice is the change will happen now, or it will happen never.
You can schedule it for the future, but the choice will always be "do it now" or "don't do it now".
Oh wow, that hits home. To be fair, the historical context for the decision can be valuable information, the problem is the next step. Even if you can't fix it right now, you might make steps towards that. Or you might say: Now that we have this heavy table outside, why not attach more things to it?