Team Size: Spoiler: The Optimal Number is 5.

John Cousins
February 7, 2023
1 min read
the optimal number if five plus or minus two

Size does matter. Small is beautiful. A key to management, leadership, and entrepreneurship is creating teams that are sized in the sweet spot. That number is five plus or minus two. That goes for boards, development teams, meetings, and decision making.

If you want to get shit done, keep the amount of people directly involved around five.

Steve Jobs was known to kick people out of meetings if the size got too big.

Obviously this is a rule of thumb and doesn’t apply in every situation. Allow self-organization to work its magic. Articles on the agile software development movement mention a preferred team size of 7 plus or minus 2 for software development Scrum teams.

But by keeping this optimal 5 in mind we have a benchmark to work off of and keep in mind as we witness teams flourish or flounder.

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John Cousins
Author, Entrepreneur, & Teacher

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