When it comes to breaking up employees into teams, many managers are never quite sure how many team members are too many or how many are too few. Here’s a simple way to tell.
You should be able to feed the team you put together with no more than two pizzas.
The “Two-Pizza Rule” is something that Intuit CEO Brad Smith swears by and something that AccountingToday writer Daniel Hood explains in comprehensive (and very amusing) detail here.
The concept is simple and, like many simple concepts, extremely effective. If a team consists of too few people, they’re likely to be overwhelmed by the task; too many people, and there’s bound to be a lack of communication.
That’s why two pizzas is the magic number. According to Smith, the teams at Intuit are intentionally kept at around four to six people to help bolster creativity and foster collaboration. Four to six people per group works out to 4 or slightly more than 2.5 slices per person, respectively.
