How do you explain refactoring to a non-technical person?

Posted by Benjol on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Benjol
Published on 2010-11-10T06:03:21Z Indexed on 2012/09/25 3:50 UTC
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communication

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refactoring

(This question was inspired by the most-voted answer here)

How do you go about explaining refactoring (and technical debt) to a non-technical person (typically a PHB or customer)? ("What, it's going to cost me a month of your work with no visible difference?!")

UPDATE Thanks for all the answers so far, I think this list will provide several useful analogies to which we can point the appropriate people (though editing out references to PHBs may be wise!)

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