title: Do Surgical Teams exist?
body: <p>Has anybody been in or has seen a kind of "Surgical Team" as described in The Mythical Man Month? Have you heard of somebody actually implementing "Mill's Proposal"?</p>
  
  <p>There is a lot of detail about the various roles in the book itself, but for those who haven't read the book, I found a <a href="http://www.dfpug.de/loseblattsammlung/online/workshop/design_patterns/sonstiges.htm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">website</a> and a <a href="http://runtimelog.blogspot.com/2005/06/mythical-surgical-team_10.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">blog post</a> which give a good summary. I've quoted the roles from the website below:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p><strong>The Surgical Team</strong></p>
    
    <ul>
    <li><p>The <strong>surgeon</strong> is the chief programmer and the el-presidente of the whole
    team. He produces all the
    specifications, codes the entire
    system the team is responsible for,
    tests it, and drafts its supporting
    documentation.</p></li>
    <li><p>The <strong>copilot</strong> is the surgeon’s assistant. His main purpose is to
    share in the thinking about design
    issues – to serve as a sounding board,
    as it were. The copilot represents the
    team in meetings with other teams. He
    knows the code intimately, and serves
    as insurance in case of disaster to
    the surgeon.</p></li>
    <li><p>The <strong>toolsmith</strong> supports the surgeon and builds specialized utilities and
    tools as may be required by his
    surgeon. Each team has its dedicated
    toolsmith in addition to any central
    services provided by the rest of the
    project infrastructure. The tester is
    responsible for maintaining test cases
    for testing the surgeon’s work as he
    writes it. He is both an adversary who
    devises test cases to measure against
    the formal specs and devises test data
    to be used in debugging.</p></li>
    <li><p>The <strong>language lawyer</strong>, which can serve several surgeons, I a widely consulted
    specialist who delights in the mastery
    of the intricacies of the programming
    languages and the operating systems
    upon which the software must perform. </p></li>
    <li><p>The <strong>administrator</strong> handles money, people, space, and machines. The
    surgeon is the ultimate boss, with the
    last word on all these issues, but the
    day to day management of the issues
    and interfacing with the
    administrative machinery of the
    project is the role of a professional
    administrator. One administrator may
    serve more than one team.</p></li>
    <li><p>The <strong>editor</strong> edits and revises the documentation as drafted or dictated
    by the surgeon and oversees the
    mechanics of its production.</p></li>
    <li><p>The <strong>program clerk</strong>, trained as a secretary, is responsible for
    maintaining all the  machine-readable
    and human-readable technical records
    generated by the team. All the filing
    and indexing is the responsibility of
    the program clerk.</p></li>
    <li><p>The <strong>secretaries</strong> handle the project correspondence and non-project files.</p></li>
    </ul>
    
    <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/ytOqk.gif" alt="http://i.stack.imgur.com/hz0H7.gif"></p>
  </blockquote>