Sometimes, one man is smarter than a team
A team will argue. One man will not.
One person can’t be good at everything, we are admonished, typically by people who don’t want to work that hard. Bollocks, I say. One person can be good at everything. Not at the same time, of course, and I doubt that one person can be really superb at everything.
Here is the crux: When a project is wholly controlled by one person who doesn’t answer to anyone else, that person will do everything he thinks important, and only what he thinks important.
He wouldn’t undertake such a project without a clearly perceived need and a clearly conceived answer to that need. As with commissioned development, there may be several project reboots and re-conceptions. Prototyping clarifies perceptions and reveals technical limitations.
Eventually, he will be satisfied and will reveal a work with such coherence of design and execution that bureaucracy cannot hope to compete.
A problem here is that we live and learn. Throughout the project he refines his technique, and the quality of work improves. This is a strong argument for sticking with what you know in development.
Sometimes, our virtuoso will look at his handiwork, and see this in it. And do it again, from scratch, but very quickly. And then we get a cut diamond.
Why do I keep saying “he, his ” rather than “he/she, his/her” or the grammatically grotesque “they, their”? Because, like music, only men create great software. If you disagree you have only to point me in the direction of just one virtuoso software development by a woman, and if Google knows about it I will make a correction and a commitment. In the meantime, I assert that “he” is factually correct.