Coordination Cost: Why Doesn’t Adding More Participants Always Speed Up Collaboration?

Coordination cost is not the labour of doing the task itself. It is the time, attention and rules required to keep people or parts aligned. When two people review a document, they mainly need to confirm the version, their comments and the final decision. With six reviewers, there may be more knowledge in the room, but also duplicated annotations, conflicting views, delayed replies and uncertainty about responsibility. More people add capacity and also create more relationships that must be aligned.

This differs from communication cost. Sending a message transfers information; coordination also determines who acts, when they act and which version they should use. It also differs from transaction cost, which concerns how an exchange is found, agreed and carried out.

Coordination cost explains why “adding a few more people” can sometimes slow work down. The answer is not to remove all collaboration, but to make responsibilities, interfaces, versions and decision rights clear enough that the work of alignment does not consume the added capacity.