Have you ever found yourself struggling to scale your team while still maintaining its effectiveness? Well, you’re not alone - many leaders face this challenge on a regular basis.
Jeff Bezos’ “two-pizza rule” states that teams should be no larger than seven people. The rule is about pizzas because you should be able to feed the team with two pizzas. The idea is that a smaller team communicated and collaborates more effectively.
This concept of less being more is also evident in Italian pizzas. The belief that the more ingredients a pizza has, the better it is, is simply not true. In fact, some of the best pizzas come with just a few simple and fresh ingredients. The toppings on the classic Margherita are only tomato sauce, mozzarella, and basil. This minimalist approach allows the flavours to shine through and creates a perfect balance of taste.
In many ways, Italian pizzas are a great example of the “two-pizza rule.” The few ingredients collaborate well together. They remind us that sometimes less is more, and that simplicity can often lead to greatness.
The “two-pizza rule” works because it enables:
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Simpler communication matrix. Less people means reduced cognitive load. It means improved team cohesion, where team members forge strong relationships. It means less confusion leading to better clarity, which in turn fosters trust and collaboration.
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Faster decision making. Less people means it is easier to get to agreement. In a bigger team, group think discourages dissent and diverse opinions get silenced. Whereas in smaller teams, equal participation is required, and open debate is more probable.
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Increased accountability. Less people means we avoid social loafing. Each team member has a voice. Each one counts more, which leads to ownership of the work, shared purpose, commitment, and motivation.
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Clarity of ownership. Less people means every team member knows what they are responsible for.
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Smooth coordination. Less people means quicker feedback loops, less bureaucratic processes, and less time gets wasted on coordinating calendars.
If you’ve been in leadership for a while, you may be familiar with this “two-pizza rule” already. And if you are reading this, you’d like to get some useful tips to take away (besides the pizza dough recipe below of course). So here are a few suggestions for you to consider:
Obviously the idea is to keep the teams size small. What does that mean in your Engineering org? Cross-functional teams that can be self-serving is a start. That means that at a minimum we want one product owner, one designer, one frontend developer, 1-2 backend developer (or up to three full-stack devs). I’m in the camp that the developers should be writing their own tests, and the product owner should be doing the acceptance testing.
Second suggestion: communication is key. It is important to make sure that everyone is on the same page and we aligned on the priorities. Prioritise collaboration. Find and define team rituals that work for you. It might be regular checkins, and/or weekly retrospectives and planning meetings. Don’t overburden everyone’s calendar with meetings. We want the team to have enough maker’s time. But we also want to allow time to correct misunderstandings or misalignments as well as build trust and share ideas. Role model the type of transparent communication you wish to see.
Next, allow teams to own parts of the product. If everyone does everything, onboarding to the product will take a very long time (especially with matured and massive codebases). But also no one becomes an expert or has ownership and accountability. Designing the teams around functional verticals is a start. This approach has cons that need to be consciously addressed, but that is a bigger topic to be discussed in a future edition. The pros outweigh the cons. It provides clear ownership, deep knowledge of the problem, pride, and increased accountability.
Related, push decisions down. When asked, “Should we do X or Y?”, you should reply with, “What do you think and why?”. Ship their answer if it’s 80% as good as yours. This will build ownership, trust and confidence and help you to not being a bottleneck.
Speaking of bottlenecks, streamline processes and eliminate any unnecessary steps or tasks. This will help to ensure that everyone is working efficiently and effectively, and that the team can deliver high-quality results. If there are any bottlenecks or inefficiencies in your workflow, remember that sometimes less really is more - so don’t be afraid to trim the fat and focus on what’s most important. We can do this together as a team by running frequent retrospectives on how we work, and then make the effort to improve things from week to week.
Finally, use technology to your advantage. There are plenty of tools to facilitate real-time communication and collaboration. Find the ones that work for your team. I especially like the ones that allow pairing. Work to reduce the time people are isolated at home with no connection to their team.
And as much as everyone loves pizza, in the next team meeting make sure to order some greens as well.