Wow this thread is getting really interesting, but it seems we all come to similar conclusions in the end.
I used to work in 4-7 people teams but I was not thrilled by the efficiency. I used a lot of time managing the team (telling who should do what, training new people, recruiting new people, writing design docs, etc, etc) in addition to my dev tasks.
I work in a 16(!) people team as the producer, and it feels like there are 6 people doing a lot, and many that just seem to look in from time to time, that I need to ask for results on a regular basis. Now, to be fair, most of the team of course works in a day job and not everyone feels like coming home and just continuing work on something else. But a little self-discipline would be nice. Tell us if you have time or if you don't so we can plan better and distribute work of important tasks in a different way.
But what really sucks about my team.. Is, I've been doing most of everyones work, and they just pick up slack and shit. Mostly because I work at a very fast pace and I don't like waiting around for anyone to finish something up. Especially when it hinders what im doing for more then a few days.
Which is the next issue in our team. Me and my friend can spend close to 100% on this project as I quit my job some time ago and he finished his studies of quantum physics. So no strings attached. The others do work and can never keep up with our pace. We have to wait a lot for things to get done, so we're thinking about getting more people, which leads to more overhead and planning and holding hands.
I have noticed this, there were 2 kind of people in my teams. Lazy bums and working horses. There was never anyone "between".
Didn't quite make the same experience, but it's close. Either you have people who really have self-discipline and believe in this project and work and deliver results, or you have people that drop in from time to time and you have to explain what was going on for the past week and constantly keep motivating to continue working. I slowly ask myself if that's worth it.
The people in the team have to be motived by their internal desire, not by the leader. It can't work any other way.
Soooo true.
So I guess one problem we all face is: if we paid people a decent sum so they could do this full time we could really DEMAND things. Deliver this model by the end of the week. Otherwise they wouldn't deserve the pay. But the issue is, I guess, we all here work for free and we believe in a project. You may have profit shares agreed with your team, but it doesn't pay them now, so nobody feels obliged. But if the game gets a success, they all would want their money, and rightly so, they worked for it. But somehow the project is the loser here. You paid them in the end, but you didn't get the dedication the project deserved.
So if we're all working for free there seems no excuse for getting motivated people and having really steep conditions under which people can join the team. Either they deliver and are motivated or you should not keep them in the team. The other dilemma is that recruiting takes so much time. We have huge problems getting people at all who like to work on a project, on a bigger team, working on a model that'll end up in the game. So we kind of like to stick with the current team, as all in our team are nice fellows, cool people, but not always that commited to the project. What are you going to do? It seems crazy kicking somebody out who knows how we work, works maybe a little slower, but you don't need to hold their hand every step of the way. Recruiting somebody else means time, they need to be introduced to the team, learn how we work, and you don't know the quality they'll deliver.
There's no ideal situation in any case. We just muddle through the best we can
We use Basecamp, it's been the best thing! It's super easy, no complicated features, just plain simple calendar, tasks and discussions.
We use Google Drive for files and documents to collaborate on (game design and stuff).
And Skype for our weekly conferences. Communication is really important, getting everybody together always gives a slight boost. But if people are not good at communicating, it's hard keeping them focused and motivated.
Developer
