Team size is a concern in agile methodologies. Many articles about this topic recommend a team no greater than 9 people. Amazon uses an interesting concept for defining if the size of an agile team is not too big, the 2-pizza team: no team should be larger than 2 pizzas can feed.

Why smaller teams are better and what is the optimal size?

Shmula explains the size issue based on the number of links between each member of the team. Increasing the number of members increases the number of links exponentially:

Links = n * (n – 1) / 2 where n is the number of team members.

Doug Putnam, QSM Vice President, shows some very interesting empirical data on team size and project success:

From the 491 projects that were analyzed we would conclude that a 3-7 person team has the best performance (3-5 would be the best, but 5-7 people is a very close second).

So my advice is to break large teams of tens or hundreds of engineers into small teams of 3-7 people plus a Product Manager to act as a client proxy. A good way to break teams is either by product and/or by sub-system. Well, how to break the development team into small teams probably deserve its own post. So, stay tuned! 🙂

Workshops, coaching, and advisory services

I’ve been helping companies and their leaders (CPOs, heads of product, CTOs, CEOs, tech founders, and heads of digital transformation) bridge the gap between business and technology through workshops, coaching, and advisory services on product management and digital transformation.

Digital Product Management Books

Do you work with digital products? Do you want to know more about managing a digital product to increase its chances of success, solve its user’s problems, and achieve the company objectives? Check out my Digital Product Management books, where I share what I learned during my 30+ years of experience in creating and managing digital products:

• Digital transformation and product culture: How to put technology at the center of your company’s strategy
• Leading Product Development: The art and science of managing product teams
• Product Management: How to increase the chances of success of your digital product
• Startup Guide: How startups and established companies can create profitable digital products