Disagree, somewhat.

Craftsmanship requires both broad vision and attention to detail during execution. It's challenging, but there's no reason a someone can't do both, even if they prefer one over the other. There are lots of great "one man band" developers out there who clearly have to wear both hats. To me, this smells like folks wanting to shirk their responsibility for the part of the job they don't like.

I'm with you.

The first phase is really fast-paced uber-productive (as you assemble all the bits from past experiences), and the second phase really slows down as you deal with the nitty gritty of implementation and attention to detail. Just doing the first phase is the equivalent of being an ideas guy. I.e. useless without the implementation.

I agree it's important to practise a bit of both for personal development. But why would you continually fight against the grain if you could be playing to your natural strengths and delivering more value?

Because every kind of work has components that you find pleasant and ones you don't like as much. It's not realistic to just say "I'll try to avoid the part I don't like", especially when there's usually some parts that _nobody_ likes.

Yes, that's very true. I believe the point here though is to play to your strengths for the good of the project. If someone else is better at the detail work then let them do it. The project as a whole will be better produced and that's your end goal. We're not here to build character by completing unwelcome tasks, we're here to build products.