Traditional software engineering environments often implement a model of change management that is based on reserving software components. A user reserves (or checks out) a component to prevent other users from concurrently modifying the same component. In most of these systems, any user can reserve a component. The VA Smalltalk approach to software development differs from many of the traditional environments.

Each software component has an individual who is responsible for the component's integrity or consistency. There are certain operations which only these individuals can perform. Classes have owners and developers. Methods are owned by the owners of their containing classes. Applications and configuration maps have managers. The term manager is used for applications and configuration maps because the persons responsible for those components typically coordinate the activities of many developers.

Component ownership provides a dynamic concurrent engineering environment while maintaining adequate control over the development process. For example, several developers can simultaneously modify a class within an application. However, only the owner of the class can determine the main stream of development for that class.