Part II: Team Size and Productivity

In Part I of this series, we demonstrated that average productivity (effective size/effort) increases with project size. This relationship holds true across the size spectrum whether we’re talking about projects in the very small range or projects that deliver a million lines of code. Above this cutoff, the sample size is too small to be definitive.

But productivity isn't the only metric that increases with project size. On average, large projects use more effort, take longer, and use bigger teams.  How can these results be reconciled with previous studies which conclude that the large team strategy results in lower productivity? It would seem that we have a contradiction on our hands.