Step 2 - Team Size and the number of Teams

Team Size

When setting up Teams the first question we get is how big should a Team be, which is really also asking how we are defining a Team. We often throw around the term two-pizza team, meaning you can feed the group with two pizzas. But how big are the pizzas you might be asking, really this means roughly 8-12 people. Another great way to think about Teams is as a squad, a cross-functional group working together towards a common goal. The good news is Teams was designed to work well for these sized squads because we found this is already a really common team size and way of working across organizations. So likely this will sound right to you.

Team type 1: Cross-Functional Squad

• These Teams are made up of some combination of design, engineering, and product. Teams such as Growth, Core, or Integrations.
• This is what the majority of your Teams will be.

Team type 2: Functional Squad

• These Teams would be based more on the functional group such as Product or Engineering
• Example: A Product Team with all the Product Managers and this Team is used to manage product backlog.
• While these functional teams do have use cases they will be less commonly used. When you think of the large size an engineering team can be even at a medium-sized organization, this alone wouldn’t be a good structure for organization.

It is important to note that a user can be a member of more than one Team.

Team Size

Now that we know how many people and what group of people should make up Teams, the next step is how many Teams do you need. This is going to really depend on your company size and structure. As your company grows rather than your Team size growing to huge numbers, most companies will instead increase the number of Teams. This means that likely the bigger your company the more Teams you will have.

‍Note: Teams and Workflows are limited based on your payment plan. This is designed to allow you to grow your business with Shortcut.
‍Free: 1
Team: 5
Business: 10
Enterprise: Unlimited