The best way to fix an under performing team is to reduce it's size. Split the team, move some people to another team, etc. It doesn't have to be about firing p

The best way to fix an under performing team is to reduce it's size. Split the team, move some people to another team, etc. It doesn't have to be about firing people and that actually should be a last resort. 2 is alright as a size. 3-4 is great. 5-7 can still work, anything over that is probably too large. You get all sorts of issues with big teams including increased communication and meeting overhead, scope creep (because those people need to be busy), too many captains on the ship and the resulting conflicts, etc. Most of that goes away if you split teams and allow them to focus. Small teams get more done faster. It's better to have 2 or 3 small teams than 1 large team. Don't have managers in the team, just tech leads. Product management is a cross team function. Not having a lot of team managers makes it easier to move people around as well. That's a good thing and you can adapt dynamically to changing circumstances and needs. Big companies have a tendency to hire new people rather than to consider moving people that they have and trust already around because it's easier. Managers derive status from their team size and are protective of keeping their team members, especially the ones that get things done. This dynamic results in a lot of negative behavior and this weird dynamic of people being treated like generic resources that are literally hoarded. You get this ego driven empire building where the loudest managers get the biggest teams and the largest budgets. This results in a lot of people ending up in the wrong place for the wrong reasons. And the resulting problems are fixed by hiring more people. If the company is big enough, you get teams literally engineering around other teams. And then inevitably after a few years somebody realizes that they have too many people and they start firing people. This actually makes the problem worse because the best people won't wait for that to happen and leave by themselves and of the ones that remain some get fired and the remaining people are probably demoralized.