Considerations in sizing your team
I’ve hacked with direct team-sizes from solo, duo, trio, the classic 4, the 5’s, and a few in-betweens all the way to the insane 15 people-size.
From my experience every possible team-size has its own pros/cons,
- solo: tough, but zero communication and collaboration overhead
- duo: can be a magical dynamic (e.g. frontend/backend, fullstack/ML, fullstack/designer) if both have strong complementary skillsets
- trio: solid, but can be stretched thin and more complexity than duo. Implies that a duo would not have the full scope of skills required for this project.
- 4 people: the ‘ideal’ pizza sharing size, even with slightly overlapping or missing skillsets – can often achieve minimum viable outcomes ‘somehow’ while covering wide perspectives
- >= 5 people: the organisation and communication overhead spikes here, and continues to exponentially increase – inefficiencies start to become more obvious
Every single person in the team brings:
- a voice
- needs (to be heard, an intention, preferences…etc)
- a skillset
- a vibe
Hence, every +1 increase to team size increases the complexity in orchestrating the team to work effectively. With increasing difficulty in finding alignment.
One should always ask if the additional is worth the costs and increased challenges.
And if one does not have agency on deciding the team-size, then still note the challenges of it and adapt how you/the team collaborates.