If you read last post you know I am experimenting with working in teams. I tend to think in graphs, so here is the conclusion I reach so far:

By “Satisfaction” I meant satisfaction of the leader or of the team, and involves quality of the paper, how much fun we had writing it, how innovative it is, etc*… By “Competence” I also meant competence of the lead author or of the team regarding the topic, stats, ideas… While for the lead author there is a lot on being good at integrating coauthors feed-back, for teams it also involves getting along really well. This graph is only a feeling, but I think that while teams can accomplish better results when they work hard, a single author is most likely to have moderate success even when the overall performance is low.

I think good teams need time to really get along. I also think working in the same space helps, but with email, tweeter, etc… may be is not that important anymore. I also think that 3-4 people is the key number to work in team, as is not realistic in my opinion to have more than 5 people fully involved without discussing badly.

Anyone with experiences to share?

*yes, ect… includes impact factor.