Great points about how managers can help, as it is their job. At a company, there are the incentives but the desired output by any means necessary (e.g. relying on the “superstar”) can supersede creating a solid team.

Regarding improving group projects in schools: This is not a good idea, but a thought: school groups have rotating “managers” that are made to mainly coordinate and communicate with the professor. This mirrors the dynamic in industry, but I can see it becoming a nightmare, far worse than the current paradigm.

Also, documentation is a great idea, and I think pull requests are useful way to track this and improve the situation - by taking action to fix a problem and create an artifact of the action (with comments on the why).

(the $SLACKER env var is a nice touch. The goal is to have never get defined, but alas.)