Just so I don't forget it. The whole pico.verify() thing is a little eager. Add this to a TestCase of your choice to see what I mean: public static class VerificationCounterAdapter extends DecoratingComponentAdapter { public int counter = 0; public VerificationCounterAdapter(ComponentAdapter delegate) { super(delegate); } public int getCounter() { return counter; } public void verify() { super.verify(); counter++; } } public void testComponentVerificationCount() throws Exception { DefaultPicoContainer pico = new DefaultPicoContainer(); VerificationCounterAdapter vca = new VerificationCounterAdapter(new ConstructorInjectionComponentAdapter(Touchable.class, SimpleTouchable.class)); pico.registerComponent(new CachingComponentAdapter(vca)); pico.registerComponentImplementation(DependsOnTouchable.class); pico.registerComponentImplementation(DependsOnTwoComponents.class); pico.registerComponentImplementation("test", DecoratedTouchable.class); pico.verify(); // assertTrue(vca.getCounter() == 1); } You will see that vca.getCounter() == 5, so the poor little SimpleTouchable gets verified 5 times. I marked that for v2 since its in no way problematic (at least for me yet) it just a thing that could be optimized.