Law of diminishing returns and innovation

Diminishing returns is the decrease in marginal (incremental) output of a production process as the amount of a single factor of production is incrementally increased, holding all other factors of production equal. 

This is usually used to find the optimum number of team members. If a software feature requires 100 days effort it cannot be completed in 10 days by a 10 member team. 

Number of developers does not mean working software. Since software is like crafting something new it does not fall in the same category as assembly line. More number of developers can write more lines of code. But it just increases the complexity. Complexity is directly proportional to number of bugs. All these lead to additional time to production. 

Is it impossible to build features faster? Yes, it is possible. It requires innovation. Let us see the problems preventing a team from achieving its potential. 

• Clarity in communication
• Solutions are abstract. 
• Any problem can have multiple solution.
•  Past experience changes the perception. 
• A solution can have different meanings to different people.

How do you communicate better. You need to communicate first about how to communicate. Discuss best ways to define the problem and solution. It may not be same for all problems. Some problems do not need any description. Just one line is enough to communicate the problem and required solution.

Some will need detailed documentation. A detailed account of how solution will be implemented with mockups and interface definitions will be needed. Innovative ways to communicate will help the team perform better.

If you want to shorten the duration for a feature, you need to innovate on breaking up the problem into smaller workable chunks. Workable being the keyword, it might involve multiple interactions between these chunks. It need to be defined prior. If this can be achieved then more people can work on the feature and it will be completed faster.