I recently had breakfast with a guy (he shall remain nameless) who told an interesting story.  In short, it went like this: there was a 5 person start-up that built an impressive web-based software product.  They went to sell it to a large organization that had a 75 person development team (with, incidentally, zero testers or QA people).  Two guys from the product company met with the CEO and the head of technology.

That giant dev team had been struggling to produce anything of any degree of quality, and the CEO nearly blew a gasket when he saw what a tiny team was producing while his massive (and massively expensive) team was proving to be inept.  Funny thing is, the small product company didn’t get the sale because the head of technology blocked it, presumably by convincing the CEO that it wasn’t “enterprise ready” or something along these lines (i.e., covering his ass).

It amazes me how the combination of ignorance and people trying to protect their jobs can create such massive waste and inefficiency.  There are plenty of cases where big teams make sense, but 99% of the time your web application development project is not one of them.

Small teams.  Clear responsibilities.   Tight schedules.  Narrow scope.  Total accountability.   These are pretty simple concepts.