I have now worked on two different teams that use the Agile/Scrum approach in the last two years and both teams were eager to improve the way they approach software development. In the first team, we could easily convince our product owner to get time for internal things like improving the build system, setting up better integration tests, having a better release strategy etc. Right now the PO is also willing to give us time, but he is more pushing back, which is reasonable as he also must get his things done.
Anyway my question is now, how do other teams handle this? Do you create an improvement story and put it on the table during planning or do you keep a "bucket" of time around for such things? How difficult is it in your experience to convince the product owner to do get time for improving? After all these kind of improvements will benefit the team, but not directly or immediately the prodcut owner/business.