Team Charter

Purpose

The team charter defines a team’s purpose, approach, and infrastructure to support them in carrying out the project. It is a team-oriented document that provides guidelines on behavior, administrative functions, and relationships. It allows team members who are otherwise unfamiliar with their peers on the team to be aware of team expectations and their role within the team dynamic.

Application

The team charter is developed early in the project by the team to be used as guidance for team behavior and administration. Throughout the project, it may be updated by team consensus, but it is normally posted in a highly visible location to ensure that team members can use it as a reference.

Content

Team charters vary, but they should work toward developing norms and guidelines for team behavior and performance . That’s an important consideration. As such, they can include definition on what team norms are for performance, attendance, and conduct. Team charters may include the items discussed in the following subsections.

This is normally tied to the project objective, but may look at that objective from the team’s perspectives on quality, delivery schedules, and cost/incentive accomplishments.

This is a list of behaviors that are either expected or unacceptable within the team. It may include expectations on team meeting attendance (e.g., “Team members who must be more than 5 minutes late for a meeting will e-mail their explanation to those who were in attendance”) or protocol (e.g., “Information discussed in team meetings will only be shared outside the meeting through documented minutes”) or attitude (e.g., “Team members will avoid the use of the word ‘can’t’ during project discussions”). Although these practices may be difficult to enforce, they establish behavioral norms for team members to understand.

3.0 Team Administration

Project team members often need to share significant documentation. The charter includes some detail on where that documentation will be stored, in what formats, and how updates and version control will be maintained. This component of a team charter may also define escalation procedures for team and customer issues. It should also define how and when the team charter may be updated.

Approaches

Because there are a wide variety of teams, team sizes, and organizational protocols, no two team charters will ever be identical. That affords team members a great deal of latitude in determining what information should or should not be incorporated into the charter. The key in evaluating team charter content is to ask the question: “Will this information potentially minimize conflict or confusion later in the project?” If the answer is “yes,” then the component of the team charter should be incorporated.

Considerations

Team charters formalize information that is frequently given as “understood” among team members. As such, some team members (particularly those with years of service in an organization) may balk at the notion that they should document how their relationship with their peers should function. Also, team charters generally have little or no enforcement capability associated with them. The success of the charter frequently hinges on team members’ capacity to become their own team police. If they can capably encourage others to follow the guidance of the team charter, it becomes more effective over time. One means of encouraging adherence is through signatures on the team charter. Although there is still no enforcement capability associated with the document, team members who sign are more likely to adhere to the agreement.