It’s Surprising How Much Small Teams Can Get Done [audio]

I'm part of a 3-man company, Glare Technologies, and we develop and market two products: a high end 3D renderer with plugins for several 3D modelling apps, and a fractal art application. We do basically everything, from the online store and website to the coding and support emails. We've been fully independent since the beginning, around 2010.

When I hear about the development world out there, especially in America, where everyone has these crazy offices and there's just money flying everywhere and it's all growth growth growth with loads of people joining all the time, I can't help but feel it's an entirely different universe.

We could probably do better with some investment and growth, but it's great to just be a small team.

Re: It’s Surprising How Much Small Teams Can Get Done [audio]

#6

Post by aidenn0 » Wed, Jan 24, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

Medium teems seem worse than both large and small teams.

With non-small teams, you need formal communications channels, which adds significant overhead. With a medium team, this eats up most, if not all, of the extra productivity you get by having more people than a large team.

There are some things that you just can't get done with a small team, and then a large team is needed, but at a much higher cost.

Re: It’s Surprising How Much Small Teams Can Get Done [audio]

#7

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 24, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

tw1010 wrote: post #2

It’s Surprising How Little Big Teams Can Get Done

[deleted]

Re: It’s Surprising How Much Small Teams Can Get Done [audio]

#8

Post by cs702 » Wed, Jan 24, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

Say the cost in time/money/resources of coordinating between any two individuals is on average x dollars. Let's call this figure pair coordination cost.

The pair coordination cost between 3 individuals, ignoring overhead, is 3x dollars, as there are three possible pairs that need to coordinate, i.e., there are three connections in a network with three nodes.

The pair coordination cost between 4 individuals, ignoring overhead, is 6x dollars. At 5 people, the pair coordination cost is 10x dollars.

At n people, the pair coordination cost is (n(n-1)/2)x dollars, which is asymptotically proportional to n²x as n grows.[a]

When coordination costs are high, as with software development, it's not surprising that small teams outperform large teams.

Large software development teams generally cannot accomplish much -- unless they break into smaller, highly autonomous teams with well-separated responsibilities.

This applies to other high-coordination-cost endeavors, such as building a successful company from scratch.

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[a] This is Metcalfe's law, but for a network's pair coordination cost instead of value: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law

Re: It’s Surprising How Much Small Teams Can Get Done [audio]

#9

Post by snarf21 » Wed, Jan 24, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

ProAm wrote: post #4

In all my experience Im a firm believer that all you need is 7 talented people and you can accomplish anything.

Yeah, the title befuddles me. I don't find it surprising at all. Scaling is hard and the overhead grows exponentially. Another thing that small teams have going for them is that it forces focus. You can't afford to waste time having 20 people investigate something or chase one customer.

Re: It’s Surprising How Much Small Teams Can Get Done [audio]

#10

Post by dreyfan » Wed, Jan 24, 2018, 6:31 PM UTC

I run a small company of 4 people and we're currently at a $2.3M annualized run-rate. Fully remote keeps our opex very low: only about $125k excluding salaries.

I do feel we've hit a wall though, as our revenue has been ~$2M/yr for the past three years with a fairly consistent team size. We have had difficulty finding the right people who can incrementally grow revenue.

That said our primary competitor has ~80 employees and has to keeps raising more VC (we're 100% revenue funded) while their customers keep churning and showing up on our doorstep.