[marcinzm]

The issue is that at a certain scale no one person is smart enough, knowledgeable enough or has enough time to actually design a system properly with all the necessary detail. Those who try create an even worse mess than a design by committee.

>The people developing the schema should understand what normalization is and why it's so critical to long term success.

I'd expect everyone except a junior engineer to understand this if the system they work on support normalization well (ie: map reduce hates joins for example). If only your most senior engineers understand basic concepts then you have much more serious issues than design by committee.

>100% of business apps can start as excel spreadsheets documenting types, facts & relations.

Except in a large system no one person knows what all the types, facts and relations are. So you either delegate the work and listen to feedback, or you end up missing critical information or having the wrong information.