The answer to the titular question isn’t one that can be given in numbers. It’s akin to a philosophical conundrum. We can talk about it, gain insight, but never reach a definite answer. Having said that, it’s an important question and something that you have to keep in mind if you want to maximize your team’s efficiency.
Amazon’s Two Pizza Rule
Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos said during an country wise email marketing list interview (perhaps jokingly) that any meeting where you can’t feed all the people in the room with two pizzas is too big to be productive. Leaving the reliability of using pizza as a metric aside, the overall advice is actually spot on.
Have you ever heard of the “team-scaling fallacy”? People tend to think that the bigger the workforce, the more productive they are. Unfortunately, that isn’t quite right. For example, as group size increases, managers tend to underestimate or underweight the number of hours required to finish a project.
Understanding the Requirements
Now that you can agree that increasing the size of a team isn’t necessarily the best choice, you have to ask yourself: How can you decide how many people you are going to need? The first place to look for clues is the initial requirements.
Pay close attention to:
- Project scope
- Projected timeline
- Technical requirements
Keen readers might wonder about seems to influence the entire text of the project! raising a series of doubts budgets, and yes, that’s important too, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
Big projects often need bigger teams, especially if they involve different technologies. A senior developer might have plenty of experience with databases as well as frontend development. But do you really want to split their attention between development and managing SQL queries?
If working with the database is an occasional occurrence, then the answer is yes. Having a dedicated database engineer is a waste of resources, so a single talent can fill both roles just fine. Otherwise, using more than one developer appears as the best choice.
The Nature of The Team
If requirements give you the strategic view of the process, then understanding your team’s psychology will give you tactical insight.
Leadership styles lend to different team buy lead sizes. For instance, managers who prefer an autocratic approach tend to work best with bigger teams. On the other hand, democratic managers often are at their best when they are working with a small crew of highly motivated talent.
Different project managers have different preferences in regard to the size of their teams. If you already have a manager in mind, let them play to their strengths. Their expertise will prove invaluable in figuring out how to build the team.
