Code Ownership Revisited

Among well-known methodologies for software development one can recognize two philosophies regarding the assignment of responsibilities to team members for the code that they produce: collective code ownership and individual code ownership. In this article, Jurgen explains that there are not two but four ways of assigning responsibilities among team members. He also claim that the choice for either of these models should be made not by methodologies but by project managers, architects or team leaders. Jurgen also presents a number of criteria which might be helpful while selecting the best model.