What category does Coordination Costs belong to?

Coordination Costs belongs to the "Concepts" category in personal knowledge management and productivity.

What are the key topics related to Coordination Costs?

Key topics related to Coordination Costs include: collaboration, productivity, teams, organizations, efficiencies.

Coordination Costs

Q: What are alternative names for Coordination Costs?

Coordination Costs is also known as: Collaboration overhead, Communication overhead, Team coordination.

The overhead required for multiple people to work together effectively on shared goals.

Also known as: Collaboration overhead, Communication overhead, Team coordination

Category: Concepts

Tags: collaboration, productivity, teams, organizations, efficiencies

Explanation

Coordination costs are the time, effort, and resources required for multiple people to work together - beyond what they'd spend working individually. These include: communication overhead (meetings, messages, documentation), synchronization efforts (aligning understanding, scheduling), decision-making processes (reaching agreement), and handoff costs (transferring work between people). Fred Brooks observed that adding people to projects often increases coordination costs faster than it adds capacity - hence the 'mythical man-month.' Strategies to reduce coordination costs include: modular work with clear interfaces, asynchronous communication defaults, clear ownership and decision rights, good documentation, and appropriate team sizes. The goal isn't zero coordination - collaboration creates value - but optimizing the ratio of coordination cost to collaboration benefit. For knowledge workers, awareness of coordination costs helps: design better work structures, avoid over-meeting, and recognize when adding people may slow rather than speed work.

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