What is a team charter?
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A team charter is a useful tool that can help your team work well together to achieve your goals.
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It’s a document that outlines a team’s purpose/objective, roles and expectations, and deliverables.
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During your first official meeting as a team, go through the steps below to create your team charter.
What to include?
- Contact Information
- Goals
- Team Inventory
- Ground Rules
- Team Roles
- Deliverables and Deadlines
- Team Signatures
Tip: You may want to take a few minutes to review these steps individually before re-grouping and creating your team charter.
Step 1: After reviewing your assignment, list the names of each team member, as well as their contact information and preferred choice for communication. You can share your pronouns here too.
- Name and pronouns
- Email address
- Phone or WhatsApp
- Preferred contact method (eg. please email me about the project)
- Back-up contact method (eg. if something is timely, please text me)
Step 2: List the major short-term and long-term goals that you have chosen to work with and need to achieve to successfully complete and submit your team assignment.
Tips:
- Need help setting goals? Create Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely (SMART) goals, learn more here.
- Need support to better understanding your assignment? Review this checklist or complete this step-by-step module
Questions you can ask to develop your list of goals:
- What are the assignment objectives and instructions?
- What criteria will be evaluated? (eg. arguments, appropriateness of sources used)
- What do we need to accomplish to be successful?
- What do we want to accomplish as a team?
- What skills do we want to develop or refine?
Step 3: Get to know your teammates and their work styles. Discuss strengths, areas you want to develop, your preferences, and any stressors. This is a good time to share any information that will help you work well as a team and can help your team decide on roles and tasks.
Information to include:
- Name
- Strengths I am bringing (eg. Research and interpersonal skills)
- Skills I want to develop (eg. Writing)
- Areas I want to support (eg. Facilitating meetings)
- Preferences (eg. Having a detailed plan, weekly check-ins, meet before 7pm)
- Stressors/Worries (eg. Not communicating or receiving feedback)
Tip: Before completing this section, you may want to consider these questions individually and as a team.
Step 4: Develop ground rules for how your team will work. The purpose of ground rules is to set out norms that your team agrees on and will operate by throughout the duration of the project.
Add ground rules using the suggestions below, you may have others to add:
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Communication: How will we communicate throughout the duration of our project?
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Decision-making: How will we make decisions?
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Conflict resolution: How will we resolve conflict?
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Meetings: When/how will we meet and how will we structure our meetings?
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Diversity & Inclusion: How will we support one another to succeed?
Communication: How will we communicate throughout the duration of our project?
Decision-making: How will we make decisions?
Conflict resolution: How will we resolve conflict?
Meetings: When/how will we meet and how will we structure our meetings?
Diversity & Inclusion: How will we support one another to succeed?
Step 5: Assign roles that will help your team stay on track during team meetings and divide important tasks and responsibilities. If you decide to rotate roles between team members, note this down as well.
Need help assigning roles? See Guide to Group Roles & Maximizing Performance
Tip: You many decide to rotate roles between team members to distribute workload or to give opportunity for different team members to learn different skills. Teams should work out what works best for them as they identify what roles and how responsbilities will be allocated.
Step 6: Looking at your major short and long-term goals, list out the key deliverables you will need to complete, with corresponding deadlines, in order to achieve your goals.
Example of deliverables and deadlines:
(eg) Submit annotated bibliography in eClass by April 4
(eg) Edit draft document by March 28
Step 7: Each member should add their name and signature to the Team Charter to indicate that they have read, understand, and are committed to the Team Charter.
- Tip: The team can agree that each member typing their name in the signature section of the charter suffices as agreement.
On this page you can export your team charter.
Be sure to keep a digital copy of your team charter in a central location where all members can easily access it.
Suggested next steps: Create a Project Tracker with your team to assign specific tasks and divide workload. Use your team charter information to help determine tasks. Work backwards from the assignment due date(s) to map out deadlines and tasks. See the Learning Common’s Tasks Planning Tool Template and Tasks Planning Tool Sample.
Need more information about group work and working in teams?