The time tested question regarding the right number of people X to people Y question came up yesterday on the Agile Testing mailing list. Here is a variation of what I responded with.

I think the notion of ratios between qa and developers, or any other two categories of employees can largely be debunked as myth since there is way too many factors that are unique to each organization’s structure. Some things I have seen over the last 10 years which have affected the ratios (in this case product managers to developers) are:

  • size of dev pool
  • size of pmo
  • number of products to be managed
  • seniority of developers
  • seniority of pm
  • maturity of products
  • mix of products
  • maturity of market
  • method of organizational growth (organic or acquisition)
  • length of product cycle
  • level of regulation around product
  • whether the pm folks also wear other hats
  • how much babysitting the client requires

I think the more important questions about these sorts of ratios are

  1. what is your current ratio?
  2. is it working?

The problem, or perhaps attribute, of both those questions is that only the person asking them can correctly answer them. Not only are they the one in the correct context at the correct time (there and now), but working is a term loaded with interpretation.

So what is the proper ratio of people X to people Y? It depends.