Agile Leader Pattern 3 for Building Awesome Teams: Small is Big
Small teams bring big power.
This post continues the analysis of J. Richard Hackman’s article, The Six Common Misperceptions About Teamwork¹. Building on the first two posts on Encouraging Different Perspectives and Stabilizing Teams, this third post in the series debunks the thinking that larger teams are more effective.
Pattern 3 — Small is Big
Misperception: Bigger teams have more capabilities to complete the work and ensure the adoption of what is built.
Reality: Small teams promote stronger team collaboration, shared understanding, and productivity. Social loafing is a common problem with large teams.
Richard Hackman and Neil Vidmar researched the perfect team size in 1970². They asked teams varying in size from 2 to 7 members to perform several tasks. Each team was asked two questions:
- Is your team too large for the task at hand?
- Is your team too small for the task at hand?
Most noteworthy, the results of the study showed that the optimal number is 4.6 team members. This rounds up to 5. Also notable, Hackman was known for never allowing team sizes larger than 6 in his classes at Harvard. According to Hackman, there was…
