Conventional wisdom is that the more heads that focus on a challenge, the more likely they will find a creative and better solution, faster. But some of Silicon Valley’s biggest firms have seen the folly in this wisdom and begun to organize into small teams that work independently and collaboratively. Google has them. So does Facebook. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos calls them “two pizza teams” because he thinks a team which can’t be fed on two pizzas is a team that’s too big. Now Leapset, a firm building software and products to automate independent US restaurants, has introduced the small team concept at its Sri Lankan development centres.
People in large teams are less engaged, and individual performance drops. The team as a whole may complete more work, but individuals are less personally productive, so the team essentially gets more done at a lower rate. Larger teams also lead to more friction, partly because communication suffers. More people also means they require more management.
Leapset’s solution has been to organize all the engineers in its 180-strong Sri Lanka offices into 20 or so small teams of no more than six people. The company calls this insane engineering. The term is picked up from the so-called ‘Insane Mode’ on the Tesla Model S, which accelerates the car from zero to 60 miles per hour in just 3.2 seconds.
The Tesla can accelerate this fast because under the hood the car is completely different to any combustion engine driven vehicle. Its lithium ion battery powered electric motors are positioned over the wheel shafts, feeding power directly into the wheels. Due to friction and energy loss during transfer, only 30% of power produced in a traditionally built car engine reaches the wheels. But in the Tesla, 90% of energy produced reaches the wheels, making Insane Mode possible.
“We wanted to figure out how to get this insane mode in software engineering,” says Shanil Fernando, Leapset’s co-founder and Managing Director in Sri Lanka. “We wanted to create software without inefficiencies and friction while maintaining creativity and entrepreneurship,” he says about the process that has resulted in more empowered teams.
Leapset’s solution is four-pronged. First, the company reorganized itself across horizontals into small self-organizing teams of no more than six engineers. Each team develops one product at a time and is mentored by directors who work across teams. Second, all team members have to become proficient in all development layers and programming languages. Usually, software engineers specialize in one programming language, but to work in a small team they have to understand everything from the back end to the front end.
Third, the team’s collaboration is key. This emphasizes adaptive planning, rapid and flexible responses to change, evolutionary development, continuous improvement and early delivery. Fourth, test-driven development relies on repeating a short development cycle; initially the developer writes an automated test case that defines a desired improvement or new function, then provides minimal code to pass the test and finally reworks the new code to an acceptable standard.
When a Leapset small team fulfills the four conditions, it has reached insane mode, meaning that it’s performing at its optimum level. Coincidentally, Tesla is also organized around small teams of five to six people.
Shanil points out that the small team concept has been successfully practiced in Sri Lanka – although not in the technology space. During the war, the Special Task Force was organized around small teams of two or three people who would live and work together while completing special missions. The concept built strong loyalty and proved extremely successful. The navy took a similar approach when it found its large ships were frequently engaged by small enemy boats. Since the ships couldn’t maneuver fast enough to fight the small boats, the navy deployed small boats manned by three sailors that were as fast with devastating effect.
Shanil adds that the small team concept embraces startup culture. “If I start a new company tomorrow, it’s not going to have 30 people. It’s going to be a maximum five-person team seated in a room, building a product together.” He points out that a team is fully optimized at this size and can harness the power of individuals and drive entrepreneurship and innovation because each team is like a company developing a product. Decisions are made faster. As the team size grows, managing it takes up time. Time that could be spent developing the product is instead spent on management.
US-headquartered Leapset introduced the small team concept first at its Austin, Texas office, but the concept is being championed in the Sri Lanka offices. Leapset has 100 employees in the US. Leapset kickstarted the concept in Colombo two months ago and has already set up some cross-border teams with three members in Colombo and one in the US.
“The result has been amazing,” says Shanil. “These small teams promote entrepreneurship and increase creativity. Since they’re self-organized, they can make their own decisions quickly. We encourage them to make decisions, good or bad; and to fail fast if that’s unavoidable. As a result, I’m seeing great products and ideas, and faster execution. It is non-hierarchical and very different to a traditional Sri Lankan company.”
[pullquote]People in large teams are less engaged, and individual performance drops. The team as a whole may complete more work, but individuals are less personally productive, so the team essentially gets more done at a lower rate. Larger teams also lead to more friction, partly because communication suffers. More people also means they require more management[/pullquote]
The company didn’t organize its engineers into teams randomly. Each team starts with a particular idea or project. At the initial stages, the company is unsure of how many heads the project might need, and a team usually starts with two and grows as needed. “We believe in organic growing,” says Hiranya Samarasekara, who mentors several small teams. One team working on a product called Reports NG has already reached insane mode, while others are in different stages. Dhammika Sriyananda was involved with the Reports NG team from the outset. “We get to continuously develop all of the skills needed for the project,” he says. “Coming up with concepts is easy, but continuing them without constant improvement is a challenge. We’ve tackled that through the agile process, which is a collaborative process with limited turnaround time. Everyone in the team has to be able to work on all aspects of the project at any given time. We’ve also been able to be extremely innovative because of the freedom we’ve got.”
Buddika Raveendra, another team member, adds that there is a big difference in the software development they did before and after the small team concept was initiated. He points out that the new system has built strong relationships between team members. “Usually developers in different stacks are a bit distant, but it’s not like that with the small team,” he says. “We all work on the whole product, and we develop it like it’s our own product.”
*The five-member team (pictured) working on an app called Reports NG has already reached insane mode. Prabhath Pathirana, Uthpala Nagahawatte, Buddika Raveendra and Dhammika Sriyananda, who’re standing to the left of the dice, and Pankajan Chathirasegaran on the far right are mentored by Chathura Ratnayake and Hiranya Samarasekera (third and second from the right, respectively).