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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37812
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37812
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I am a research scientist, and I have worked on teams ranging from two (I suppose the smallest group that could be called a team, although I have done solo research as well), to fifty six, if you include support personnel; and that included a few dozen PhDs. The team at the Large Hadron Collider has literally _hundreds_ of PhDs on board.

For the purposes of realism, your group size can be anything. As far as for _fictional_ purposes, many stories are set in large companies, it is okay if your MC does not have much personal interaction with everybody on the team.

In a way, you might want a "more is better" approach, if there are only eight people in your story, you will be expected to provide details, interactions and personality for all of them. If there are **twenty-eight** , you have variety when you need it, but the reader doesn't expect a full character profile for all twenty-eight of them, and you can have "circles" of interactions. Innermost, medium, distant from MC, but then your innermost circle can be perhaps four or five people the MC works with every day, the mid-range circle is people he works with once a week, the outermost circle is people the MC knows but converses or interacts with less than once a week, the computer technician, communications, security, supplies, transportation, etc.

Original score: 2