[Fragoel2]

There are some related research works (that seem not cited in the article) that focus on estimating a project Truck Factor, which is "the minimal number of developers that have to be hit by a truck (or quit) before a project is incapacitated." A good starting point for those interested is [1], which is also the source of the quote in the last sentence.

Interestingly, these works suggest that having a small number of developers that are critical for the project is risky and should be avoided, opposite to the conclusions of the paper discussed in the article.

Moreover, both Heroes and TF seem to me as consequences of the same problem: the inability of current technologies/methodologies to enable a seamless sharing/spreading of the knowledge acquired by veteran developers, that have been working for a long time on the project, with less experienced ones. I believe the shift to agile methodologies has made this problem worse if anything.

[1] http://aserg.labsoft.dcc.ufmg.br/truckfactor/avelino87423.pd...