Team Size and the "Goldilocks Zone"

Gary Salton's latest research suggests that there is a “Goldilocks” zone for optimum team size and communcation efficiency.

His group studied 3815 teams using the iOpt methodology (which I have featured in this blog before). The results suggests that between 4 and 9 people covers 25% of the distribution but contains 60% of the teams.

Gary concludes that this clustering suggests that there leaders create these team sizes in the “Goldilocks” range to be optimal for their purpose.

There is a neat youTube movie attached to Gary's blog which shows how it all works - see http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=00zae1QgH5U.

Well, my own experience suggests that 4 to 9 is indeed a decent team size (and also a useful span of control for a manager). Nice to see science backing that up!

Read the full research on Gary's blog at garysalton.blogspot.com.