I'm not disagreeing with the premise of the article, but I think the efficiency of a team has a lot more to do with its incentive structure, both social and financial, rather than its size.
Great article that completely blows the conclusion.<p>
Small teams are great for any-sized project with concrete, defined goals -- even if those goals are changing. Problem: any software project that's been around in a large company longer than a year has multiple, conflicting goals. No amount of software productivity is going to enable business clarity. So in the natural course of business growth the business will generate software groups that focus on creating repeatable software projects. That's because the only rational response to the accusation of "you software people can't develop code" is to show how you are able to create any kind of solution the business guys want. It simply becomes a different set of goals. When you're small and hungry, you have clarity of mind -- you can't afford otherwise. When you're big and busy, software becomes part of a more political corporate culture.<p>
I'd love to work on a small startup and make wonderful programs that change to world too. That's why I'm here. But I'm not naive enough to think that there aren't good reasons why large-scale software is in the state it is. It's not something some kind of simple slogan can describe or fix.