Stumbled upon this piece while reading a reference to "Cognition In the Wild".
Much of the trouble of making things work will be in communication, in getting sufficiently similar ideas of the world into everybody's head that that they agree, near enough, on how to change it, or at least so that they all know what part they are to play in the change.
I guess like any other endeavor, successful software development hinges on sharing a common mental model to start with. Is that why smaller teams are better? Since the sharing and agreeing on "what part they are to play in change" is easier?