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Making Large Teams Work Like Small Teams: Product Development at Microsoft

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Abstract

When conducting any complex tasks, small teams of talented people are usually better than large teams of average or talented people.1 To develop new products quickly, for example, a recent textbook argues that small teams of no more then ten or so people are most effective (Smith and Reinertsen, 1991: 119). One reason may be that, the fewer the number of a people on a team, the easier it is to have good communication and consistency of ideas among the members. Small teams also can simplify scheduling and work interdependency difficulties (see Brooks, 1975;Boehm, 1981).

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© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Cusumano, M.A. (2000). Making Large Teams Work Like Small Teams: Product Development at Microsoft. In: Jürgens, U. (eds) New Product Development and Production Networks. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04255-7_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04255-7_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-08387-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-04255-7

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