To the first question: By "dependencies kill teams" I mean all the forms of dependencies: Database dependencies, web service dependencies, library dependencies

To the first question: By "dependencies kill teams" I mean all the forms of dependencies: Database dependencies, web service dependencies, library dependencies, across teams, across organizations, and so on. Arguably internal dependencies inside a program are the least lethal. You are largely doing others the favor of implicit documentation by using scope control, a guaranteed statement of "This is never used outside this file". They might be able to figure as much out by grepping, remove & recompile, or IDE-based tools. "Greppability" is often part of the solution when dealing with database & http dependencies. As for the second question, basically, yes.