Why Small Teams Win

  Talent Management   Teams   ProjectsAtWork  

Size isn’t everything. If it takes more than two pizzas to feed your project team, it could be a good indicator that the team is too large. Here are eight compelling reasons why 8-to-12-person groups more often lead to higher productivity and performance. Plus: 12 tips for creating and nurturing these two-pizza teams.

As companies strive to stay agile and innovative, they’ve discovered that units of 8 to 12 people work best as the natural size of high-performance teams. This is the magic number for leadership teams, product teams, research teams, design teams, and, yes, agile project teams. In all industries and fields, small teams are beating out their unwieldy counterparts because they work, even at the very highest levels. CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos uses the “Two-Pizza Rule” to determine team sizes. If a group can’t be fed by two pizzas, it’s too big.

Can small groups handle your organization’s toughest challenges? Yes, and here are eight reasons why and how.

1. Small teams are more entrepreneurial

Not too long ago, German software giant SAP blew up the management framework for its 20,000-person development department and replaced it with “mini-teams” of roughly 10 people. Each team had the competence and authority to make the decisions necessary to complete the entire product development cycle, including the quality of the software, the functionality, and the …

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