Requests that require changes to a specific component or workflow routinely get assigned to the same team member(s), because they will be able to deliver faster than other team members. This reinforcing cycle of specialization is a local optimization (“get this request delivered quickly”) that can negatively affect the team’s overall flow of work when planning gets dictated by “who knows what” rather than “what’s the highest priority work we need to do now.” This level of specialization introduces bottlenecks in delivery (as storied in The Phoenix Project and explained in The DevOps Handbook).
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