Team Charters

In most organizations today teamwork is a way of life with numerous task forces, project teams, work teams, and other forms of people collaborating in groups.

The authors of this research report studied project teams to determine which factors resulted in higher levels of team performance.

They found that the more successful teams spent time at the beginning of their project to create a team charter which could be used to guide their work. The topics addressed on a team charter included:

1. What is the name of our team?

2. What is our goal?

3. What are our key objectives?

4. What are the boundaries of our work?

• Must include:
• Must stay away from:

5. What resources do we have?

• People
• Time
• Money
• Other

6. What is each member’s role?

7. How will we make decisions?

8. How will we give each other feedback?

9. How will we assess our performance?

10. Who must we coordinate with?

11. Who must we keep informed?

12. Who has to approve our work?

13. Who is the project leader?

Taking the time to answer these questions in your organization will result in better team performance.

How structured are your project teams and task forces?

– Scontrino-Powell