Explain how diseconomies of scale can affect systems development

What will be an ideal response?

Unfortunately, as development teams become larger, the average contribution per worker decreases. This is true because, as staff size increases, more meetings and other coordinating activities are required to keep everyone in sync. There are economies of scale up to a point, but beyond a workgroup of, say, 20 employees, diseconomies of scale begin to take over. Brooks' Law points out a related problem: The addition of more people to a late project makes the project later. Brooks' Law is true not only because a larger staff requires increased coordination, but also because new people need training. The only people who can train the new employees are the existing team members, who are thus taken off productive tasks. The costs of training new people can overwhelm the benefit of their contribution.