How many people do you have to collaborate with in your office and how productive are you during heavy collaboration?

Question

I'm asking this because I've found that I get less done when I'm working along side others heavily. If we're working on a big project and each small group (2-3) or single person has descretion on smaller tasks, I don't feel the time pinch as much, but when 5-6 of us are forced to work together on a 3 week project (3 weeks for 1 person) so that we can finish it quicker, it'll take a week (5-6 times the people and only 3 times as fast). Is this from bad management or is this because the larger the team, the more others rely on each other?

Answer 1

Sounds like The Mythical Man-Month in action.

When N people have to communicate among themselves (without a hierarchy), as N increases, their output M decreases and can even become negative, i.e., the total work remaining at the end of a day is greater than the total work that had been remaining at the beginning of that day, such as when many bugs are created.

Answer 2

According to Joel it's all about communication.

Answer 3

It's because as the group grows in size with no obvious leader, it becomes harder to reach consensus.

Software-projects-by-democracy doesn't work that well, as democracy takes time to make a decision, and that decision is not necessarily the correct one. In larger teams you need a leader that split decisions can be delegated to for an ajudication, and that person needs to have the cohones to be able to make an unpopular decision, or to make a decision that wasn't considered by the team - as long as they can show they are right.

I think you are finding that there is also less trust when the group is larger. Instead of the group allowing you to do your thing and trust you to get the right solution, you are having to submit your design and opinions for group approval - IMHO that sort of thing gets really irritating really fast.