>You are actually presenting the argument why this is both a pattern and anti-pattern. It's a pattern if the "guru" comes into the situation and mentors other team members; it's an anti-pattern if a hotshot comes in and things, with ego blazing, that only he or she can do anything right.

Now what's an anti-pattern - a pattern blown up, or a pattern which works contrary to a common pattern?

Anyway, we may discuss patterns in project design, but this time you're actually talking about people, not software. If you bring a guru to be a deus ex machina, it very much depends on his personal qualities - how will he handle the situation, how will he reorganize things, how will he get the team do it this way and not that way, and how many will be hurt with that, and how will they feel.

In that sense, the previous assumption that you had one or more gurus in the team from day one is leading to questioning the quality of your initial gurus. If they were real gurus, you wouldn't have the situation in the first place, or there was something fishy in the leading of the project from square one. I may imagine such a situation when you gather a team to build a locomotive, and meanwhile start complaining that the half-finished TV they made is cutting your laundry to shreds.

If you get into a situation where you don't really know what you want to make, you really need a hell of a guru to save your day. That doesn't really mean the guy who invented the guys who wrote Fox - it rather means a wise peacemaker.