Week 11 - Secret sauce? Team size 🌶️
Also strategic growth and pudding
A newsletter about user-centred design at Made Tech; a company building public services that create outcomes for people and society.
We hired a third user researcher this week. Taking our permanent UCD hires up to five people.
Secret sauce? Team size 🌶️
I’ve started working part-time in a delivery team this week. As well, I’ve reviewed some bids for new teamwork with clients. I’ve been lucky to be in some high performing delivery teams. It got me reflecting:
What do all these performing teams have in common?
All these teams were small. Never any more than seven people.
This is called Brooks’ Law, which you might have come across before. It’s the observation that adding more people to a team makes them slower at getting stuff done. Every new person significantly increases the lines of communication in the team.
A team having a shared understanding of problems to solve and ideas to test is precious. It can really drive momentum in the discovery and alpha phases. And in my experience, the most impactful way of achieving shared understanding is keeping teams small.
This reminds me of seeing Tan France, of Queer Eye fame, being asked the question:
What’s your top fashion tip for people?
Tan answered - buy clothes that fit.
I was expecting a nuanced and complicated answer about style or colour. But sometimes a simple change can make a big impact.
Strategic team growth 🌱
The first permanent UCD people start in a couple of weeks. My priorities for June to August are:
Settle in first UCD people at Made Tech
Spread good research and design habits
I’m thinking beyond the summer by showing teammates for feedback a UCD roadmap for the coming year:
Define by doing how Made Tech focuses service design on outcomes
Sustainable UCD communities in our Bristol, London and Manchester offices
By ‘sustainable’ I mean:
Financially sustainable - turning a high enough profit
Growing community - hiring capable people
Happy community - people staying and enjoying the work
Self-managing - I can concentrate on new things
Achieving these year goals will take more than hard work. I need to be thoughtful about who I work with and where to focus UCD team efforts across service delivery, hiring and new business. I need to give this more thought 🙇♂️
Proof in the pudding 🍧
A good feeling this week was discussing what teams new UCD starters might join. It’s been useful already knowing teams’ work and delivery managers such as Laxmi and Nick. Looks like the new people can meet most of the current demand for UCD skills. The proof will be in the pudding, however. I won’t really know I matched hiring to teams until people join and work well together to create outcomes for people and society.