Friday, September 25, 2020

SMALL TEAMS -> BIG RESULTS


Frederick Brooks in his book 'The Mythical Man-Month' talks about a concept that is now famously known as Brooks Law- "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." Brooks law defies the tendency to add more people to the project in order to contain the schedule.


On the similar lines, 'The Ringelmann effect' is the tendency for individual members of a group to become increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases. This effect, discovered by French agricultural engineer Maximilien Ringelmann illustrates the inverse relationship that exists between the size of a group and the magnitude of group members’ individual contribution to the completion of a task. This is similar to the concept known as social loafing https://bit.ly/2Fyzr3g

Though big teams aren't always avoidable, small teams tend to return more value to the project and the business, as the above references illustrates.

While the theory around small teams is compelling, are there really some real business benefits around working in small teams ?

Apparently yes, and that's what Steve Pulec 's article highlights https://lnkd.in/gVbrUTQ which i have tried to represent via a sketchnote.

What are your views on small teams by big teams debate ?

Sketchnote:


My LinkedIn Post:


No comments: