Roles and teams
Span of control
Also calledNumber of direct reports
How many people report directly to one manager. For design managers, five to eight is the usual healthy range.
Span of control sets how much attention each person gets. Too few reports and the manager drifts back into hands-on work; too many and one-to-ones, reviews and career conversations start to slip.
It also drives the shape of an organisation: with eight people per manager, a forty-person design team needs about five managers before anyone above them.