Our org is going through a re-architecture - and large updates are causing row locks because many records are being related to a single parent record. While I can find descriptions of cause of the issue - which I understand - I don't see any guidelines on the optimal batch size to use when performing updates where the likelihood of row lock is very high. (all updates referencing a single parent). Is there a standard practice to reduce the number of records that end up in the asynchronous queue? Running batches at 500 records, serial is working fairly well - but I don't know if there is a specific limit of batch size that could be used to prevent row locks entirely.

There are times that Salesforce.com really frustrates me!!  You would think that it would be easy to just add a text formula custom field that would allow you to populate it with the Full Name of an Opportunity Team Member.  What kind of gyrations to I have to get to a field that should otherwise be available for me to access through a standard database relationship.  This is where having the ability to do a SOQL select query in a formula field would really come in handy.  Come on Salesforce developers.  What happened to common sense?!?