&gt; the right model is an art studio, a movie set, or a band<p>&gt; Knowledge workers aren&#x27;t cogs, they&#x27;re part of a team.<p>That&#x27;s a bit ironic because movie sets and bands (almost always) are structured teams with industry standard roles (drummer, audio technician, key grip, gaffer) that make it easy to hire people for the duration of a gig.<p>Developers, analogously, might operate instruments; manufacture their own instruments; compose and&#x2F;or improvise music; manage their own careers; negotiate their own contracts; edit their own recordings; package their own work for distribution; distribute their own work; and even perform their own focus group studies. Sometimes there&#x27;s no time to figure out all those things out so you have to pick up one of the instruments of your predecessors and play something useful immediately.<p>I can perform the same exercise for film production, sports teams, and surgical centers. One of the big problems with software development is that we <i>don&#x27;t</i> have distinct roles. Everyone is a developer&#x2F;coder&#x2F;engineer. It would be as if the entire music industry were executives and music developers. Or the entire film industry were producers, directors, and film engineers.<p>Anyway, I actually agree with you underlying point that the health of a team trumps the skills of a team every time. And since the structure of a software team is so fluid, cohesiveness and cooperation is actually <i>more</i> important than it is in a band.