The More the Harder

Even though my contribution to the team project is finished, I still keep an eye on the forum Sulis and follow the discussions of the French team, just composed of two translator students.

They organized and shared the part of the work very fast. They just needed two days and six posts, and the work was shared between them! After these six posts, they knew who would do what, explicitly.

Contrary to us, the instructional designer students, even though with four members, the start was slow and nobody really knew what they should do and what the others were doing.

It reminds me my first year in university, when I joined the cinema club. I went to a script workshop, where the participants took part in the writing of a script.

Around ten students took part in the first meeting. Ideas were flourishing. Everyone came up with different ideas and were suggesting all of them to the group. However, it was hard to have everyone agreed as new ideas didn't stop appearing. In the end, we agreed for a general story line, but there weren't many details.

Two weeks later, the second meeting occurred. There were fewer participants this time, around five. Yet, the story line was written faster. Every participant listened to one another and ideas were more precised. The script was built up together, not by trying to fit parts together. At the end of the session, even the workshop tutor concluded that a small group worked faster than a big group.

I believed the same thing happened during my current team project. It means the more member a group has, the harder it is to manage. It's also the reason why big companies are considered on the top, because not everyone can manage so many people. Of course, there are sub-supervisors, etc, etc, but still though, working and managing big groups is hard work.