Team Collaboration & Change
Working Agreements
Write down the ground rules your team actually wants to live by, in words everyone can check.
- Time: 45 to 60 min
- With: The whole team, facilitator optional
- You get: Five to ten rules everyone has said yes to
How to use this worksheet
- Each person writes 2 to 3 ideas per section alone, then the team merges and prunes them.
- Keep only rules the team will actually follow. Fewer, specific rules beat a long list.
- Phrase rules as observable behaviour: "We answer review requests within one working day", not "We respect each other".
- Agree how breaches are handled, then review the agreements after 4 to 6 weeks.
What do we stand for? These are the tie-breakers when rules run out.
Prompts and example
Ask yourself
- Which behaviours do we want more of?
- Which value would we defend even if it cost us speed?
Example
- Honesty: we raise problems early - Ownership: we finish what we start or say that we cannot - Learning: mistakes are information, not blame
How do we work together day to day?
Prompts and example
Ask yourself
- How do we hand work over?
- How do we ask for and give help?
- How do we include remote or part-time colleagues?
Example
- Feedback on pull requests within 1 working day - Ask for help after 30 minutes of being stuck - Everything discussed in a call is summarised in writing
Who decides what, and how?
Prompts and example
Ask yourself
- Which decisions need the whole team?
- What is the fallback when we cannot agree?
Example
- Reversible, small: the owner decides and informs - Irreversible or cross-team: proposal, 2 days for objections, then decide - No consensus after two rounds: the product owner decides
What do we do when we disagree?
Prompts and example
Ask yourself
- What is the first step, and who takes it?
- When do we escalate, and to whom?
Example
1. Talk to the person directly and privately 2. If still stuck after a week, bring in a neutral third person 3. Lead decides only if both sides agree to that
How do we hold ourselves and each other to these agreements?
Prompts and example
Ask yourself
- What happens when someone breaks an agreement?
- How do we notice early?
Example
- Anyone can say "agreement check" and name the rule, no blame - We review these agreements in every second retrospective - Repeated misses are discussed in 1:1, not in public
What can everyone count on from everyone else?
Prompts and example
Ask yourself
- What do we expect of leaders?
- What do new joiners need to know on day one?
Example
- Tickets reflect reality at all times - Say early when a deadline is at risk - Be prepared for meetings: read the pre-read
Before you finish
- Each rule describes behaviour someone could observe.
- Everyone in the team has said yes, not just not no.
- There are fewer than ten rules in total.
- A review date is set.
About working agreements
Working agreements make implicit expectations explicit. They are common in agile teams but useful for any group that works closely together.
They only work if the team wrote them. Rules handed down from outside rarely survive the first stressful week.
Recommended reading
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- The Five Dysfunctions of a TeamPatrick Lencioni
Why explicit commitments and accountability are what make working agreements stick.
- Turn the Ship Around!L. David Marquet
A leader-leader model of distributed ownership and the ground rules that enable it.