My experience is that Heroes are problems because they're a) bottlenecks b) single points of failure. Using them as a crutch exacerbates both problems. However,

My experience is that Heroes are problems because they're a) bottlenecks b) single points of failure. Using them as a crutch exacerbates both problems. However, having the most productive person on the team do as much as they can do is an easy trap to fall into. When one person is working on a totally different level from everyone else, it's probably in their interest to leave and find a different group that they're more peer-ish with. However, Heroes tend to become Heroes by being the self-sacrificing type, so they're not as likely to do so. This also reminds me of Comparative Advantage[1] from basic economic theory. If you have to people X and Y and two tasks A and B, and X is better than Y and both A and B, should X do A and B for himself? Turns out no. X should only do the task they're more better at, and trade Y for the other; more gets produced, and there's a ratio of exchange such that X and Y both end up with more A and B than they would have otherwise (see [1] for rigorous definitions and simple maths). It's the same situation, you should be taking work away from the Hero so they can focus on what they're awesome at, rather than giving them more work. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage