The vast majority of work in a technology company gets accomplished by very small teams of highly focused individuals. At Plaid, we call these atomic teams. An atomic team is a group of 2-8 individuals, who are 100% dedicated to a given project, and work in a highly collaborative manner to achieve their goal. 

Some commonalities of atomic teams:

• One clear goal. Not two or three, just one at a time. And a shared understanding of how they will achieve the goal.
• 100% dedicated team members. Team members are fully focused on the problem at hand, and are not splitting their attention with other projects. 
• Full staffing. The atomic team has enough of the skills and capabilities needed to achieve their goal. Often atomic team members may not have every single skill needed to do the project, but one of the team members may be responsible for bringing in advisors, consultants, or learning themselves how to do the missing bits. 
• High degree of internal communication. Generally this means that the team does things like daily standups, semi-frequent onsites/offsites, and working together in a dedicated physical or virtual space. 
• Low external coordination costs. Because an atomic team is roughly self-contained, the team has low XFN coordination costs. And when external coordination is required, oftentimes there is one person whose job (in whole or in part) is just focused on that coordination, thus insulating the rest of the team. 
• Minimal (not zero) hierarchy. Atomic teams work because they can move fast and make decisions quickly. Good atomic teams act very flat and non-hierarchical – oftentimes it’s hard to tell who reports to whom. That said, the team needs at least a nominal leader to break deadlocks (though the leader should not overuse this authority).
• A shit umbrella (and a cheerleader). Atomic teams need someone to play shit umbrella, and to protect them from the machinations and slowness of Big Company Process (BCP). They also need someone to rally the team through hard times, or cheer them on when they succeed. Likewise, they may need someone to help them secure more resources or break through organizational slowness and blockers. The shit-umbrella-cheerleader should probably only spend 5-10% of their time with the team, and must be careful not to give too much direction or be a backseat quarterback.