{"id":470,"date":"2008-02-24T08:10:52","date_gmt":"2008-02-24T15:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/470\/lost-in-translation-in-large-teams"},"modified":"2014-10-07T14:14:25","modified_gmt":"2014-10-07T19:14:25","slug":"lost-in-translation-in-large-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/lost-in-translation-in-large-teams\/470\/","title":{"rendered":"Science Behind the Amazon 2 Pizza Teams: Lost-in-Translation with Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"a296a24fa2fc69ef5487857f02f111e8\" data-index=\"9\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- Single Post readerboard -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:inline-block;width:728px;height:90px\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8207522353004717\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1144967431\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>Sometimes, there are, indeed, too many cooks in the kitchen.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"difference between team and staff - how our language dictates how we treat people\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/team-or-staff\/454\/\">Team<\/a> size can make a big difference in the success of your service or product.\u00a0 What is counterintuitive for most people is that the larger the team size, the lower the likelihood of success for your service or product.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 <a title=\"entropy in large teams and processes\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/process-improvement-as-entropy-management\/477\/\">Entropy<\/a> can set in and large teams are inherently bad vehicles for communication.\u00a0 In what follows, I show quantitatively how team size does have an impact on the effectiveness of communication and the eventual success of the service or product.<\/p>\n<h2>The Amazon 2 Pizza Team<\/h2>\n<p>When I was at Amazon, teams were organized into small, delta teams called &#8220;2-pizza teams&#8221;: no team should be larger than 2 pizzas can feed.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a great approach to team size.\u00a0 In my short career, I&#8217;ve learned how true that rule is.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s another thing I&#8217;ve learned <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>2 people are smarter than one<\/li>\n<li>3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 people are smarter than 2<\/li>\n<li>a team larger than 9 people is just a big dumb gelatinous blob (acronym: BDGB)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Okay, that&#8217;s not true at a wholesale level, but it sure feels like it.\u00a0 A small team with highly smart and capable team members can do much more than 10 mediocre team members.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/the-wisdom-of-crowds\/136\/\">The Wisdom of Crowds<\/a> mentality doesn&#8217;t work that well when it comes to efficiency in teams.<\/p>\n<h2>Science Behind Unmanaged Communication Explosion<\/h2>\n<p>A more quantitative explanation is as follows:<\/p>\n<p><!--adsense#120by240right-->One of the root causes of failure in projects is communication \u201d either a lack thereof, miscommunication, or hand-off&#8217;s.\u00a0 Large teams are inherently vehicles for bad communication.\u00a0 This is basic combinatorics \u201d for a given project, suppose there are persons A and B.\u00a0 In this scenario there is only 1 communication link.\u00a0 Add person C, now we have 3 communication links, A-B, B-C, C-A.\u00a0 Add person D, then we have 6; Add person E, then we have 10 communication links.\u00a0 Inductively, as team size grows, the raw combinatoric communication link counts grows geometrically, not linearly.\u00a0 To demonstrate this, we use basic statistics of the form n-choose-r, where !, such as n!, is equivalent to n factorial, to arrive at the formula for how many pairs we can choose from n items:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-15079 \" src=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/n-factorial-shortcut-2-pizza-team.jpg\" alt=\"n factorial equation, long version, for 2 pizza team communication\" width=\"144\" height=\"66\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>For the number of pairs, we can reduce the above formula to the following:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-15078\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/n-factorial-2-pizza-team.jpg\" alt=\"n factorial shortcut, to describe 2 pizza team\" width=\"83\" height=\"64\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Visually, as team size grows, the communication links grows non-linearly, but exponentially:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_15077\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15077\" style=\"width: 726px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-15077\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/2-pizza-team-communication-explosion.jpg\" alt=\"n factorial, 2 pizza team\" width=\"726\" height=\"443\" srcset=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/2-pizza-team-communication-explosion.jpg 566w, https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/2-pizza-team-communication-explosion-300x182.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 726px) 100vw, 726px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-15077\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">www.shmula.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>A Rejoinder<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><!--adsense#234by60halfbannerright-->Do not let the above dissuade you from large teams; if the product requires a large team, then that is what is needed.\u00a0 Caution, is what I am arguing here.\u00a0 The facts are that the larger the team, the more communication channels there are and the entire process then becomes more error-prone.\u00a0 If the product requires a large team, then expect the above challenge and manage it.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>A Conclusion<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>There is wisdom in Bezos&#8217; notion of the 2-Pizza Team.\u00a0 Small teams &#8212; provided you have the right people &#8212; work incredibly well.\u00a0 Also, there is wisdom in Toyota&#8217;s usage of <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/obeya-communication-breakdown\/385\/\">Obeya or The Big Room\u009d<\/a> as a way to mitigate defects caused by large teams.\u00a0 A combining of the two will most likely make for a great team and a successful product.<\/p>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes, there are, indeed, too many cooks in the kitchen. Team size can make a big difference in the success of your service or product.\u00a0 What is counterintuitive for most people is that the larger the team size, the lower the likelihood of success for your service or product.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Entropy can set in and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12327,"featured_media":15077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Science Behind Amazon 2 Pizza Teams<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The science behind the amazon 2 pizza team is based on factorial pairing. 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