The refactoring phase is where a lot of the value comes from. Most people would accept that the act of shipping code to production creates a feedback loop that uncovers opportunities to improve the code further. It often gets missed that the same is true of many other activities of the software development lifecycle. Tests for example should not be a dead end, but rather be part of a cyclic graph of actitivies that keeps looping, as you presented. I wrote a similar take on documentation here: philosopherping.com/the-true-value-of-documentati…