Forbes has a nice
piece
on how Google takes advantage of small teams in a big organization to
actually get things done. For all those who say this wouldnt work
for us because were too big, just have a look at one of the worlds
most successful companies.
Brin and Page have created a corporate organism that tackles most big
projects in small, tightly focused teams, setting them up in an
instant and breaking them down weeks later without remorse. Their view
is
that there is much greater progress if you have many small teams going
out at once, Schmidt says.
Hundreds
of projects go on at the
same time. Most teams throw out new software in six weeks or less and
look at how users respond hours later. With 82 million visitors and 2.3
billionsearches
in a month, Google can try a new user interface or some other wrinkle
on just 0.1% of its users and get massive feedback, letting it decide a
projects fate in weeks.
And the money
shot:
A
typical task, from tweaking page designs to doing scientific research,
involves six people. Last month Google was reported to be in a bid to
derail Microsofts overtures to America Online by teaming up with
Microsofts cable ally, Comcast, to invest in AOL; that this
didnt leak earlier may have been because only a few Googlers were in
on it.
Theres one of the key benefits of small:
magnified accountability. When you have a group of 50 its easier to
dodge accountability and responsibility. But, when you can feed the
team
with one pizza its a lot tougher to hide (and thats a good thing). [Signal vs. Noise]