50 people would just have a lot of meetings. I bet 6 people could make a real difference though.
If you have headcount for "testing" then I don't want to use your software. Tests are integral to coding and should be written first.
Your process description doesn't sound anything like how I understand products are developed at Apple. Where's the headcount for the designers / UI specialists? Are you counting them as engineers?
Yeah, if everything were synchronous, deterministic, linear, and non-interactive, life would be so much easier, and test-driven development might actually work.