# Ringelmann Effect vs. Agile
Source: https://www.yegor256.com/2015/11/21/ringelmann-effect-vs-agile.html
The [Ringelmann Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringelmann_effect)
(a.k.a. [social loafing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_loafing))
is basically about people experiencing _decreasing_ productivity
when working in groups. We're basically more productive when
we work individually to achieve personal goals rather than being
teamed up. That was discovered by Prof. [Max Ringelmann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Ringelmann) a hundred
years ago in 1913. Today, during my workshop in Berlin at
DATFlock 2015, we tried
to reproduce that experiment. It seems the French professor was right.
{% jb_picture_body %}
Here is what we did. We created two groups with four people in each of them,
all non-native English speakers. Then, both groups received the same
task---to create as many words as possible using the letters in a single given word.
It's a pretty simple task that just requires some time and creativity.
{% badge https://www.socialpsychology.org/images/socialfigures/ringelmann.jpg 72 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Ringelmann %}
The first group worked as a team. They had just one piece of paper
and one pen to write down the words they found. We called them a
_co-located_ team.
The second group of four people worked in a _distributed_
mode---they had four pieces of paper and four pens. They didn't communicate with
each other and just created words. They knew that the best performer
would receive a prize (a bar of organic chocolate).
I promised a prize to the co-located team too. A very similar chocolate bar.
We gave them both just 5 minutes.
Our result was this: _38 words_ found by a co-located team and _41 words_
found by a distributed team. Of course, we removed duplicates and non-English
words.
The distributed team was _8 percent_ more productive than the co-located one.
Of course, this may not be a clear experiment, and we can't use these numbers
to really prove anything, but it was interesting to see how groups work and what
actually motivates us to achieve results. We had an hour-long discussion afterward
in an attempt to find out what each group member felt while working in a group
or individually.
You can try to repeat this (or a similar experiment) in your team and check
the results. Post them below in the comments; it would be interesting to see whether
it does or doesn't work in your case.
Now, my main question. If I understand it right,
[Agile]({% pst 2016/jul/2016-07-11-mistakes-in-agile-manifesto %}) promotes group
responsibility and discourages _individualism_. How does it go along
with the Ringelmann Effect? Any thoughts?