Context:
An organization whose basic social network has been built.
Forces:
Too much coupling to any given role, and it is in overload.
Too little coupling, and the role can become information-starved and under-utilized.
Solution:
Resulting Context:
A more balanced organization, with better load-sharing and fewer isolated roles.
Design Rationale:
Our empirical results from the organizations studied in the Pasteur project show that any given role can sustain at most 7 long-term relationships. In particularly productive organizations, the number can be as high as 9. Particular needs might suggest that the process designer go outside these bounds, if doing so is supported with a suitable rationale.
Communication between roles is complete in an organization if every role communicates with every other role. We can talk about the communication saturation of an organization as the ratio of the number of communication paths within the organization to the total possible number of communication paths. For a given project size, Harrison has found this ratio to be higher in highly productive organizations than in average organizations.
Next: Named Stable Bases