{"id":115006,"date":"2020-08-02T15:54:17","date_gmt":"2020-08-02T19:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbach.net\/?p=115006"},"modified":"2021-07-17T12:23:43","modified_gmt":"2021-07-17T16:23:43","slug":"pizza-and-the-pm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/pizza-and-the-pm\/","title":{"rendered":"Pizza and the PM"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

\"Pizza<\/a>One of the implications of the\u00a0<\/strong>COVID-19 virus<\/strong><\/a> has been that most in-person meetings are getting moved online or canceled as we continue to shelter in place and work from home<\/strong>. As a project manager, I schedule my share of the 11 million<\/a> meetings that take place every day in the U.S. – all of which are now online thanks to COVID-19. One of the factors I consider when setting a Microsoft<\/a>\u00a0(MSFT<\/a>) Teams<\/a> or Zoom<\/a> online meeting is pizza.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

\"BadThat may sound goofy. Pizza can help the PM decided how to shape a meeting. The PMI<\/a> PMBOK<\/a> does not venture any suggestions on how many is too many participants for a meeting<\/strong>. My experience says that too many participants over-complicate<\/strong> a meeting and make a video call unwieldy and not enough of the right people<\/strong> prevents decisions from sticking. PMs are looking for a meeting that is just right<\/strong>.<\/p>\r\n

The Bezos rule<\/h3>\r\n

One way to get the right number of project meeting members comes from Jeff Bezos<\/strong><\/a>. While not a PM – you really can’t argue with his cred’s – richest man in the world<\/a> – Amazon<\/a>\u00a0(AMZN<\/a>) – second billionaire in space<\/a>. TargetTech<\/a><\/em> says<\/a> that Mr. Bezos uses the 2 pizza rule<\/strong> to decide how many attendees should be invited to a meeting.<\/p>\r\n

\"2<\/a>While, sadly, the 2 pizza rule does not mandate that pizza be present at meetings, it means that every meeting should be small enough that attendees could be fed with two large pizzas<\/strong>. Mr. Bezos is known to have used ‘two pizza’ meetings and small project teams to foster a decentralized, creative working environment when Amazon was a startup.

The article explains that Mr. Bezos’ decision to keep meetings small in order to encourage productivity is backed up by science<\/strong>. The late Harvard<\/a> researcher J. Richard Hackman<\/a> devoted nearly 50 years studying team performance and concluded that four to six is the optimal number<\/strong> of members for a project team and no work team should have more than 10 members<\/strong>.<\/p>\r\n

2 pizza rule advantages<\/h3>\r\n

\"Team<\/a>According<\/a> to Professor Hackman, this is because communication problems increase<\/strong> \u201cexponentially as team size increases.\u201d Ironically, the larger the team, the more time will be spent on communication instead of producing work<\/strong>.

The author points out that the 2 pizza rule has several other advantages<\/strong>.<\/p>\r\n