Putting my Iconoclast hat on temporarily, I just wanted to share a thought that I’ve harbored almost my entire career: why aren’t very small teams (1–2 developers) the default model in our industry?
I think back to products I’ve used that were written and maintained by a single person, like the guy who writes the guitar amp and cabinet simulator Recabinet, or my brother, who wrote a 100,000 line XBox game by himself in a year, as well as doing all the sound, music, and graphic design for it.
I’ve seen teams of 4–6 developers achieve less with more time, and teams of 10–20 and more achieve a lot less in the same timeframe.
We can even measure it somewhat objectively: my Team Dojo, for example, when run as a one-day exercise seems to be doable for an individual but almost impossible for a team. I can do it in about 4 hours alone, but I’ve watched teams of very technically strong developers fail to get even halfway in 6 hours.