interpersonal process

8/7/2019 Interpersonal process

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TEAM SIZE



WHAT IS A TEAM ?

A team comprises a group of people linked in a common purpose.

Teams are especially appropriate for conducting tasks that are high in complexity

and have many interdependent subtasks.

A group in itself does not necessarily constitute a team.

Teams normally have members with complementary skills and generate synergy

through a coordinated effort which allows each member to maximize his or her

strengths and minimize his or her weaknesses.



TEAM SIZE

What’s the Right Size of a Team?

When the team grows, communication complexity multiply, and behaviour such

as social loafing may surface.

For decades, researchers have noted that mere changes in team size can

change work-group processes and resulting performance.

By studying 238 workers within 26 teams, ranging from three to 20 members

in size, Mueller’s research replicates the general assertion that individuals in

larger teams do perform worse.

Jeff Sutherland shared some statistics in favor of smaller teams where, the

cost per function point of a team of size 7 was $566 and that of a team of size

14 was $2970.



IS YOUR TEAM TOO BIG?

TOO SMALL?

When it comes to athletics, sports teams have a

specific number of team players: A basketball team

needs five, baseball nine, and soccer 11. But when it

comes to the workplace, where teamwork is

increasingly widespread throughout complex and

expanding organizations, there is no hard-and-fast

rule to determine the optimal number to have oneach team.

The most productive team have 4-6 team members,

as suggested in a recent article on "How to Build a

Great Team" in Fortune magazine?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rugby_union_scrummage.jpg



EACH PERSON COUNTS

When it comes to team size, each person counts. "When you have two people, is

that a team or a dyad? With three, you suddenly have the opportunity to have

power battles, two to one.

Ringelmann's famous study on pulling a rope -- often called the Ringelmann effect

-- analyzed people alone and in groups as they pulled on a rope. Ringelmann then

measured the pull force. As he added more and more people to the rope,

Ringelmann discovered that the total force generated by the group rose, but theaverage force exerted by each group member declined, thereby discrediting the

theory that a group team effort results in increased effort.



DIVERSITY: BAD FOR

COHESION?

Klein's recent research has looked at another confusing area when it comes to

teams -- the value of diversity. Various theories suggest that diversity

represented by gender, race and age leads to conflict and poor social

integration -- while various other studies suggest just the opposite. "The

general assumption is that people like people who are similar to themselves, so

there is a theory to suggest that a lot of diversity is bad for cohesion," says

Klein. "But there is also a theory that says diversity is great, that it createsmore ideas, more perspectives and more creativity for better solutions."



Imagine that you have just been "given" a software development groupconsisting of 100 developers. Now imagine that you are given a really importantproject to work on. Which would be better:

a) Get all 100 people working on the project (with good project management,leadership etc.), or...

b) Find the 7 strongest people in the group who are willing to work on theproject (in other words, the seven strongest people that are actuallyinterested in the project) and get them working on the project, fire the rest

of them, and spend the savings on giving the 7 people the absolute best toolsand environment they need and want, and spending the rest to make themhappy/comfortable.

Personally, despite the severity of scenario b), I would definitely bet on it andnot on scenario a).



TEAM PERFORMANCE

AND TEAM SIZE

It would be an understatement to say that deciding on the size of a team is an

exact science!

It is certainly a topic where there are a lot of divergent views.

The negatives of the individual are reduced somewhat by the addition of another

individual.

Pairs keep each other grounded and there are no core and peripheral information

flows – there are only two people. However, parochialism and path dependency are

still factors. The core aim of a pair should be to encourage diversity and novelty

in each individual.



Scrum recommends the team size to be 7 plus/minus 2. Hence the team can

vary between 5 and 9

According to Cognitive Edge, the human brain has co-evolved with social

conditions and there is a natural limit on the number of social relationships a

person can maintain. The study could easily be labeled as the rule of 5,15 and

150. 5 is linked to the natural limits of short term memory, 15 is the natural

level of deep trust and 150 is the number of identities that a person canmaintain in his head.

Another study related to the Parkinson’s Law, suggested that any team size

below 20 can work except 8. Above 20 there is a natural digression into

subgroups and no consensus can be formed. With 8, people usually findthemselves in deadlock situations over decisions.



CONTD…

As groups get larger, the quality of results increases with intellectual cross-

pollination. But group negatives prevent breakout:

a) Symptoms of group think increase

b) The percentage of individual performance declines

c) Groups of three to five elicit much more conformity than just one or two

d) Evaluation apprehension increases

e) Core and peripheral information flows exclude some people

f) Political strategies increase

In conclusion, a tactical combination of team structures increases creative

output.



FINDINGS ON TEAM SIZE

A study released in 2005 by Quantitative Software Management (QSM) onsoftware projects showed that, assigning a large team on software projectsdoes not necessarily result in any significant shortening of the project time. Itcan actually result in more defects!

Research on top management teams, by Katzenbach and Smith, shows that theseteams are far more difficult to form. However, they fare better as real teams when they are small.

With regard to global, virtual teams, team size is not a major issue In Start-up businesses the initial team, comprising the founders / ownershipteam, is usually small. By and large, such teams seem to have no more than threepeople.

In a cross functional project team, the size of the team is dictated by thefunctions that have to be re resented. So the team size varies b task.



TOP MANAGEMENT TEAM

SIZE

Adopting an information-processing perspective and drawing on work in social

psychology, one study examined the effects of top management team size on

firm performance in different environments. Data from 47 organizations

revealed that firms with large teams performed better and firms with

dominant CEOs performed worse in a turbulent environment than in a stable

one.

In addition, the association between team size, and firm performance, is

significant in an environment that allows top managers high discretion in making

strategic choices but is not significant in a low-discretion environment.



HOW DOES TEAM SIZE

AFFECT TEAM SUCCESS?

Many managers and project leaders can attest that team size has a significant

impact on whether a team will succeed or fail at achieving a goal.

Teams with fewer members are more likely to develop strong cohesive bonds that

enable them to work cooperatively together and reduces chances of social loafing,

but smaller teams often lack the available resources to efficiently achieve a goal

Larger teams have the benefit of utilizing a diverse range of strengths and skills

and can brainstorm more effectively to identify a broader scope of problems andsolutions. However, larger teams usually cannot effectively make reasonable

decisions and a phenomenon called groupthink, which is the tendency for individual

members to suppress dissent in the interest of group harmony, is more prevalent.

http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/62275.aspx




FACTORS DETERMINING TEAM

SIZE

Maturity of your business team.

Available labor poolYour marketing activities

Proximity

Task type



PROXIMITY

The important thing to consider is the extent to which team members will be

working in close proximity to one another. If a team is expected to work

closely with one another, both in proximity and degree of interaction, smaller

team sizes are more effective.

However, when teams are expected to work more independently, team size

becomes less problematic as long as team members are diverse in terms of

skills and abilities.



TYPE OF TASK INVOLVED

Task Unity

When a task cannot be divided into smaller subtasks, team size greatly

influences successful performance.

When a team’s success depends on the additive contributions of all members,

the greater number of teammates available increases team performance.

However, when a team is too large, a negative ceiling effect emerges because

there are too many people attempting to complete a single task, thus limitingteam performance.

Alternatively, when individual success at each phase of a task is required, it is

best to have fewer members because, as team size increases, the chance of

having more incapable members increases.






CONTD…

Task Subdivision

When tasks can be divided among members, there is a positive increase on

team performance.

When more members are available to contribute resources, a team is able to

divide a task into more subtasks, which decreases the time necessary to

complete a task.

However, the more subtasks, the harder it is for team members to combineindividual results into a collective whole, thus jeopardizing successful team

performance



PUTTING IT ALL

TOGETHER

Proximity

High Proximity: teams work in the same room or on the same floor and interact atleast 60% of the time (2-7 members)

Medium Proximity: teams work in the same office building and interact between30% and 60% of the time (7-12 members)

Low Proximity: teams work virtually, remotely, or on different worksites andinteract less than 30% of the time (12+ members)



CONTD…

Task Characteristics

Unified Task with Additive Qualities: a team’s task cannot be divided intosubtasks, and the task relies on the additive contributions of each team

member (5-10 members)

Unified Task with Individualistic Qualities: a team’s task cannot be dividedinto subtasks, and the task relies on the individual success of each teammember (3-7 members)

Divisible Task: a team’s task can easily be divided into subtasks for eachmember to work on individually (10-15 members)



THE START UPS

e f f

o r

t

Team size

Note- the special characteristic of start up team is their proximity and highfrequency decision making. For such teams an inverted u-shape relationshipbetween effort and team size exists with max. effort in teams of 3 members.



THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE STOR



Once upon a time a tortoise and a hare had an argument about

who was faster. They decided to settle the argument with a

race. The tortoise and hare both agreed on a route and

started off the race. The hare shot ahead and ran briskly for

some time. Then seeing that he was far ahead of the tortoise,

he thought he'd sit under a tree for some time and relax

before continuing the race. He sat under the tree and soon

fell asleep. The tortoise plodding on overtook him and soon

finished the race, emerging as the undisputed champ. The

hare woke up and realised that he'd lost the race.

The moral of the story is that slow and steady wins the race.

This is the version of the story that we've all grown up with.



The hare was disappointed at losing the race and he did some soul-

searching. He realized that he'd lost the race only because he had

been overconfident, careless and lax. This time, the hare went all

out and ran without stopping from start to finish. He won by

several miles.



The tortoise did some thinking this time, and realised that

there's no way he can beat the hare in a race the way it was

currently formatted. He thought for a while, and thenchallenged the hare to another race, but on a slightly different

route. The hare agreed. The tortoise and hare started off. In

keeping with his self-made commitment to be consistently fast,

the hare took off and ran at top speed until he came to a broadriver. The finishing line was a couple of kilometres on the other

side of the river.

The hare sat there wondering what to do. In the meantime the

tortoise trundled along, got into the river, swam to the

opposite bank, continued walking and finished the race.



The tortoise and hare, by this time, had become pretty good

friends and they did some thinking together. Both realised that

the last race could have been run much better. So the tortoise

and hare decided to do the last race again, but to run as a team

this time.

They started off, and this time the hare carried the tortoise till

the riverbank. There, the tortoise took over and swam across with

the hare on his back. On the opposite bank, the hare again carried

the tortoise and they reached the finishing line together. Boththe tortoise and hare felt a greater sense of satisfaction than

they'd felt earlier.



Moral of the story is

"Understanding the reasons why individuals perform better than

others may be one key to implementing successful team

management tactics in organizations. In addition, "individual

performance losses are less about coordination activities and more

about individuals on project teams, thus indicating that There is no

hard and fast rule to an optimal team size it depends on team

members, their coordination and type of task.

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