You may not have heard about Price's law, so why don't we start with its definition?

"In any group, the square root of the total members accounts for half the output. For example, in a team of 100, about 10 people contribute 50% of the work."

Feel free to take a short break to reflect on your few recent work environments - did this rule apply there? At a smaller scale (a single team)? Or at a mid-scale (a project/small program)? And what about the broader scale (a department/even a whole org)?

Impression(s)

If you ask me, I have mixed feelings. Impression-wise, I must admit I had a similar observation for many organizations - but I'm not going to fool myself - this was not a data-driven insight, but an observation severely skewed by ...

• ... the fact that some are better at "selling their work"; they are typically more vocal, better at identifying more important (hence attracting more eyeballs) work and building the success story
• ... there are different types of work to be done; not all of those types bring equal value & glory, but even this less appealing work has to be done by someone, eventually - the silent heroes who do not wear capes
• ... some cognitive bias - like the "halo effect" - plays a role here as well; if/when someone has managed to impress us one day, we keep having such a person in our highest regard, assuming too much about their general consistency over a more extended period

Catalysts

That doesn't mean that there are no free riders out there. I've written about social loafing once and seen others sharing comments about "passengers" or "hiding in a herd" as well. But frankly, this topic was semi-consciously ignored for a long time. Why?

1. The rise of the "agile" management trend (servant leadership, allergy to the word "micromanagement," cult of self-governing teams) made it a very inconvenient conversation topic.
2. Employees' job market made employers ignore certain behaviors (to some degree) out of fear of losing even half-productive engineers (or worse: getting an opinion of a slave galley)
3. COVID had its toll as well, or rather the fact that we've all jumped on the remote ship w/o much preparation (e.g. when it comes to remote cooperation mechanisms & routines)

Countermeasures

This trend is now in its complete reversal - that's why there's so much talk about "high integrity commitment" these days. Engineering organizations tend to place much greater emphasis (than before) on their culture, strong leadership, and goals that are better defined (on various levels).

What else can be done? What particular mechanisms do help neutralize the effect of Price's Law? Here's a list of my personal recommendations:

1. Reduce the team size (e.g., split existing teams); 5 is the sweet spot for x-disciplinary teams, with 3-4 even better for more homogenous ones.
2. Make sure everyone owns (is accountable for) something, even if it's small. Of course, this ownership should have full implications —communication, dependency, quality, delivery, etc.
3. Set up tenets/principles related to work transparency: delivery reporting as a side effect of actual work (reflected in tools like Linear or GitHub), a few key metrics visible for everyone (WIP, cycle time, "value work" to "all work" ratio, flow efficiency, predictability).

Root it out?

With all that, should we aim to have everyone equally productive (eventually, at some point in the end)? Not really - there's a trap in that. Individual people's contribution is something beyond their individual productivity:

• ... the synergy they create with other members of the team
• ... their unique flavor they bring in to enrich the team; e.g., a person with an analytical mindset may be "slower" than some more spontaneous team members while also being an important counter-balance to their hastiness
• ... or just a different skill set that expands the palette of possibilities for the whole team

What are your observations? Have you encountered Price's Law in the wild? Does the formula work for you? And did it vary between work environments? What do you attribute this variety to? Feel free to share in the comments below - thanks in advance!