I agree but I guess we could make the same claim of "survivor bias" for these big NASA projects as many are making about small teams. Really I think the succes

I agree but I guess we could make the same claim of "survivor bias" for these big NASA projects as many are making about small teams. Really I think the success is down to how well managed a team is and how focussed they are on productivity. It's much easier to manage a small team because there's just fewer lines of communication and places for problems to hide. The larger the team the more you are going to have to organise work if only to distribute it to members. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that management activity itself is productivity but it's not. It's necessary but it's just admin. A bit like single vs multi-threading. You should do as much admin as needed but no more.