Hi Paul, I certainly agree that we should empower teams so that they can collaborate and create software as though the team was a single mind, but I think that there are some steps that need to be taken before this can become a common reality.

It starts with the assumption that programmers are highly skilled creative professionals with the ability to address both the big picture and the details at the same time. Such programmers are a cut above what we have comes to know as ‘coders’, who have a much more limited outlook.

My experience of software development suggests that very few people address both the big picture and the details at the same time. As Kevin has said in another comment, some people are more able to do this than others, but ultimately I don't think that many people are pushed to do this on a day-to-day basis. I'd like to go further back to basics and get at least one person on the team addressing the big picture and the details. In essence, I'd like to get software teams doing more "architecture" than they generally do now. Once that's all working successfully, then they can push the rest of the team to start doing the same so that the empowerment and collaboration can follow. I think that this catalyst is necessary for teams to become collectively more architecturally aware.