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The Relationship between Software Development Team Size and Software Development Cost.

The article discusses the challenges faced by project managers when attempting to select the appropriate size of a software development team, examining the relationship between costs and the quality of the output of software development teams. Large teams lead to a better distribution of skills but...

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Published in:Communications of the ACM Vol. 52; no. 1; pp. 141 - 145
Main Authors: PENDHARKAR, PARAG C., RODGER, JAMES A.
Format: Article
Published: Association for Computing Machinery Jan2009
Subjects:
Computer software development
Research on teams in the workplace
Information technology
Business communication
Industrial management
Software maintenance
Economics
Employment
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Summary:The article discusses the challenges faced by project managers when attempting to select the appropriate size of a software development team, examining the relationship between costs and the quality of the output of software development teams. Large teams lead to a better distribution of skills but also have higher communication, coordination, and salary costs, the article states, while smaller teams have smaller salary costs but also develop programming biases leading to costly software maintenance issues.