Staffing Lacking
When you are staffed at a level which only just covers the planned work, it means when we’re short someone for any reason, you are stressed in completing the work for the sprint. It also means you don’t get to any business-as-usual tasks. Nothing gets done, and nothing gets improved.
Developers and designers need space and time in their week to solve the smaller problems which will always exist for products. Things like changes to browser requirements, or page load fixes, or SEO for Google results, or asset management, code cleanup, etc. There is always room for improvement, but without time to make those improvements, that work will never get done. If you’re a small company, there’s an excuse. If you’re a sizable company, not so much.