I feel this article is honestly disingenuous. One of the "common pitfalls of refactoring" mentioned is "Not understanding the code before refactoring". Well yeah ? The same would apply to doing anything with the code. The following one is "Understand the business context" (note that the author has already departed from the pattern of listing "common pitfalls" to just write whatever he feels like. Or he just published his first draft).

Not a very qualitative article.