Re: The optimal size of a Software Development Team

I have seen 4 to 5 man team's work very well. This appears to be a
natural size in both corporation's with Software Engineering Depts. and
Software Dev companies as well, ... in my experience.

In general, I prefer smaller teams to larger ones. In some cases 1-2 people
is the most effective, in others 4-5. I've seen larger teams function well
only as you've described: with discrete projects.

It seems to me creating more than one core team of 4 to 5 individuals
who are given discrete projects would be preferable over, say, creating
a 20+ sized team...

The problem here is how to determine the "discrete"ness of a given project;
perhaps more important is who determines it. If a large scale project isn't
broken down well, then it might very well end up a death march.

A danger in having discrete projects is that some of these projects might be
overengineered as these projects are the only focus of the 4-5 people teams.
IOW, the company would be using more resources than needed; getting more
functionality/flexibility/features than what they actually need for a given
discrete project.

[...]
Let me know what your optimum design would be.

Depends on the actual people and project; but my bias is towards keeping
things small...especially to start.

--
Brian Moelk
bmoelk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.brainendeavor.com


.