How many people do you need to build a web platform?

Team size matters

If the project is managed effectively, work can be done in parallel, shortening the timeline. The choice of technology also impacts the extent to which work can be parallelized — some tech stacks allow developers and teams to work more independently than with other tech stacks. Of course, parallelization only matters if you have a large enough team to capitalize on it.

Having a larger team also enables you to do peer code reviews and mutual quality assurance, improving the quality of the end product and making sure features are built to spec. With a larger team, there is also less responsibility on each individual developer, so the timeline won’t be significantly affected if someone goes on vacation or gets sick.

Of course, there are downsides to having a team that is too large.

What if the team is too big?

You should always estimate the team size for individually each project — there will never be a one-size-fits-all answer to how large a team should be. The scope and timeline of a project are the main factors here. Projects that are small in scope only need a small team, while projects that are large in scope can benefit from larger teams.

That said, you should keep Brooks's law in mind. It says that if a project is already late, adding more people will make the project even later, since time that could have been spent developing the project will instead be used to get the new team members up to speed.

How big should a web platform team be?

The optimal team size will depend heavily on the project’s timeline.

If the timeline is 2 - 3 months, 4 people should be enough: a designer, two developers, and an engineering manager to coordinate the work. The first two weeks should have an intensive focus on design. After this initial design sprint, the two devs can begin working in parallel, on the CMS and building out different pages.

On the other hand, if your timeline is only 1 month, a team of 6 - 7 is more likely to meet the deadline. This team would feature two designers (who can work in parallel on pages while collaborating on a style guide), 3 - 4 developers, and an engineering manager. With a short timeline, the developers should start coding as soon as the first design elements are completed.

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Conclusion

The best team size for creating a web platform depends greatly on the requirements for the platform, and on the overall timeline for the project. Therefore, it’s important to consider the specifics of your project when estimating team size. As always, estimating is one of the hardest parts of software engineering, so you will never have 100% confidence that the answer you settled on is “correct”. You should search for a “good enough” answer.

This article has focused on building out a web platform, which is significantly more complex than just building out a single website. If you are only interested in building a website, a shorter timeline will be sufficient.