Low-level hardware bringup?

Perhaps the reason this only ever ends up being managed by one or two people is that >2 people simply do not need to manage the fussy details once they've been abstracted/normalized out.

Also, I lurked in comp.lang.forth for a week or so a while back and learned that Mattel were using Forth as a runtime for their toys back in 2004, at least: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.forth/omi6PUvymEE/..., https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.forth/LzOasFOyIMg/...

Tons of projects. Even many well known today languages, frameworks, etc, started life as one man's initiative and pet project, which they worked on alone, inside a company.

But also tons of official projects in the enterprise. A company needs an X tool, Y is known for his capacity to deliver, they get assigned to make the tool.

Not every project requires a team.

Proofs of concept/early demos. Swift at Apple was the work of one person initially.