Team Charter

The Team Charter is your team’s living operating agreement. It documents how your team will work together, make decisions, communicate, and address challenges throughout the semester.

Purpose

A strong charter helps teams:

• Communicate clearly and consistently.
• Define shared expectations and responsibilities.
• Establish processes for decision making and accountability.
• Address conflicts early using agreed-upon norms.
• Build trust and create a productive team environment.

Core Principle

Successful teams do not happen by accident. They are built through intentional communication, mutual respect, shared responsibility, and continuous reflection. The Team Charter provides a framework for these practices and should be referenced and updated as the team’s needs evolve.

Living Document

Your charter is not a one-time assignment. It should be reviewed periodically and updated whenever the team identifies new challenges, changes in membership, or opportunities to improve how the team operates.

All team members should contribute to the charter and agree to its contents. By creating and maintaining your charter, you are establishing the expectations that will guide your work throughout the project.

What a Team Charter Includes

While every team’s charter will be different, most effective charters address the following topics:

• Team goals and shared expectations.
• Member roles, responsibilities, and areas of expertise.
• Communication methods and expected response times.
• Meeting schedules, attendance expectations, and participation norms.
• Decision-making processes.
• Processes for tracking work and meeting deadlines.
• Procedures for resolving disagreements, addressing concerns, and requesting support.
• Expectations for professionalism, respect, and accountability.

The charter should provide enough detail that both team members and instructors can understand how the team is organized and how work is coordinated.

Why Instructors Review Team Charters

Team charters help instructors understand how each team plans to operate. They provide insight into team structure, communication practices, decision-making processes, and individual responsibilities.

When challenges arise, the charter serves as a useful reference point for both the team and instructional staff. A well-maintained charter can help identify gaps in expectations, clarify responsibilities, and support productive conversations about team dynamics and project management.

This is a link to some case studies that your team can review to see what types of problems teams have had in the past. Use these as a reference when writing your team charter. We will review them in class on the Monday after the charter draft milestone is d?ue.

Using the Charter Throughout the Semester

Teams should revisit their charter regularly, especially after major project milestones or when recurring challenges emerge.

A charter is most valuable when it reflects how the team actually works. Updating the document as the team grows and adapts helps maintain clear expectations and supports long-term success.

For more information about the motivation behind team charters, see:

• https://medium.com/@stephenjanaway/creating-a-team-charter-4a94971ab7e1

Team Charter

Create a word document, give it a clear name and add it to your Team directory. This will be a “living” document which means it will change as your team grows. Remember that we drafted this document in class on Wednesday. To start make sure it includes the following:

• Members and roles
• Team Purpose and goals
• Expected outcomes
• Ground rules
• Instructions/URL for accessing the git repository (See below).

For more information about the motivation behind a team charter see the following link:

• Creating a Team Charter

Team Organization - Roles

As a class we will discuss ways that you can organize your teams. Often it is helpful to assign permanent or temporary team roles to help divide the responsibility and help keep people on track.

How you ultimately decide to organize your team is up to you but you will be expected to communicate your organizational structure to your instructors for feedback. It is recommended that you try to keep things simple to start.

Use your Team Charter assignment to write down how you would like to self govern. Individuals should have more than one Role and it may be helpful to identify a Primary and Secondary person for each role. An example set of roles you could include in your team charter include:

Suggested Capstone Team Roles (Collaborative Leadership Model)

Each team member is expected to contribute to all aspects of the project. The following is a list of suggested leadership roles your team could use to help ensure leadership and coordination in key aspects of the project. Each member of the team can have more than one role. During meetings you can have a report from each roles o make sure you are covering all of your needs. Your team should decide what roles make the most sense for your project.

For each role it is recommended that you assign a primary and secondary person to work as a team (in case someone is absent or needs help). For the following a team of five students would need four roles. It may be helpful to consolidate or change the roles to better match the team size and project. Also be flexible and willing to adjust throughout the semester based on lessons learned.

Successful teams will divide the work into roles and goals for the team. How y