For better or worse, I think the idea of the surgical team runs counter to the prevailing egalitarian spirit in software development. Personally, I think there

For better or worse, I think the idea of the surgical team runs counter to the prevailing egalitarian spirit in software development. Personally, I think there are some projects that are better suited to it than others. For example, I've been involved with technically-demanding projects that suffered from the "too many cooks in the kitchen" syndrome that the surgical team approach addresses. On the other hand, there's plenty of more mundane feature development work that probably doesn't benefit nearly as much from that approach. One criticism that I would expect some to make against the surgical team approach is that it doesn't help to develop more junior team members. From personal experience, I think it's actually a good way to develop junior team members. I learned the most when I was around more technically experienced team members even if they were dictating the breakdown of the work rather than when I went off on my own to develop less technically challenging features. Some mix of the two is probably ideal, but I think there's some lack of appreciation for the benefits of a surgical team environment.