I especially like this metaphor! A codebase doesn't exist in a vacuum; a team of developers work on it and also produce auxiliary artifacts like configuration a

I especially like this metaphor! A codebase doesn't exist in a vacuum; a team of developers work on it and also produce auxiliary artifacts like configuration and documentation. The software only "works" so long as the whole system "works". When too much knowledge is held only by people, and isn't recoverable from the codebase and other desiderata, the whole enterprise (lower-case e) falters once that knowledge is lost.