As Seth Godin, author of several books I would suggest (Tribes, The Dip, The Idea Virus), lately had written in his blog, there is one big danger a company has: A jerk “who knows every technical detail” and who is the only one “who can fix that big machine”. I once made an experience with such an “I am the sytem!” - jerk who almost completely destroyed the positive, innovative culture of a whole company just because he felt insecure and threatened as the team grew and new products needed new technical approaches which blew the scope of the existing system. The fear of loosing some of his control was greater then the fun and motivation every other team member felt when we started to leave the past to build a new future. He is gone! A year ago! But there is still a lot of everyday trouble in handling the system he once “owned”. The lack of documentation and system architecture, the narrowly confined parts other team members worked on in the past and the complexity of the overall system needs a lot of effort for extending the system or reengineering single parts to allow more integration. This effort costs time and money and often leads to frustration within the team. But nevertheless the team tried to make a virtue out of necissity: Every team member became an expert of a part of a system and is responsible for the evolution and also serves as the contact person if anybody has trouble or feature wishes regarding that special part. Additionaly we developed a team statement which contains several rules for open communication, sharing of knowledge and the team based ownership of code. Priciples that never woulod work that great if the team did’t have the experience of working with the jerk.