Team Charters

Defining Team Expectations

The Team Charter can be thought of as the foundation upon which
all of the team’s work, rules, tools, and behaviors are built.

A Team Charter doesn’t require a lot of detail.
It should be limited to a high-level vision.

The team charter has two components:
The Project Definition and the Team Agreement.

Project Definition

Project Name
The name your team knows the project by.

Vision
The intended result/outcome of the project, or the problem to be solved.

Mission
Brief description of the work which will be produced to reach the vision.

Success Criteria
Measurable outcomes for the project to be considered a success.

Project Definition Example

Project Name
Invoice Tracking Database

Vision
Help the billing department reduce the number of monthly past-due accounts by providing an easy to use platform for tracking accounts receivable.

Mission
Create an invoice tracking database that enables billing employees to view real-time account statuses, engage vendors proactively to resolve accounts, and generate weekly and monthly account reports.

Success Criteria

Implement database by March 1, 2017
Reduce monthly past-due accounts by 75% after 3 months
Achieve > 80% favorability among billing employees via survey
after 3 months

Team Agreement

Behaviour Agreement
A short list of behavioural expectations for team members.

Communication Agreement
A short list of expectations around team communication.

Project Team
A list of team members, their roles and contact information.

Team Agreement Example

Behaviour Agreement

We don’t cut Corners
Its OK to disagree
Don’t assume, ask
Check your ego at the door
Be fanatical about feedback
Treat each other with respect

Communication Agreement

Daily meetings on Slack at 9am each work day
Make every effort to attend meetings in person
Update our project status board each morning before 9am
Team members are expected to be on time for all meetings

A Team Agreement:

Outlines behaviour boundaries
Shows team support
Commits members to shared values
Cultivates desired team behaviours

Even within a very close team there are bound to be incidences of differing expectations or misunderstandings.

Having a team charter makes it very clear which shared values the team has agreed to and the type of behaviour acceptable from team members.

The team charter helps keep everyone on the same page. It also means that when disagreements arise, there are some pre-accepted guidelines which can be referred to so that the diagreement and its resolution are between the team and the charter not between individual team members.

Getting to a good team culture requires the team to adopt shared behaviours. This takes time to adopt and is only possible if the team have some shared underlying values. Developing a Team Charter is a key step in getting those shared Values in place.

What we learned

Team Charter
Defines the team’s purpose and expectations.
Project Vision
Needs to be clear, but not necessarily detailed.
Team Agreement
Should be created by the team not for the team.