This blog post by
Steven
Sinofsky is a great read. What made the Office 12 team decide on using 5-8
developers reporting to a lead, and 3-5 leads reporting to a dev manager, and
the three discipline managers reporting to a GM?
"The balanced manager...is a lead with 8 employees...You can imagine
how straight forward it is for each of the 8 to interact and work
together—they can sit at the same table at lunch, they can take two cars
to a pizza place, they can bowl on 2 lanes at a bowling alley, and
chances are you can easily remember everyone’s name and what they are
working on in detail. This is an effective team. If you need an analogy
or comparable, the Navy SEALs are organized into 16 person groups with 2
officers (i.e. leads). In the Army, the smallest unit is the squad and
it is 9 or 10 soldiers lead by a sergeant. I mention those examples,
because the military has been studying organization for a few thousand
years and because manpower is everything is very motivated to have the
maximal number of troops doing the work they need to do, and not have a
lot of bloat."
OK, that's not the reason per se, but it is my favorite quote. :-)
