Who should use a team agreement?

Agile teams have recently popularized the practice of using team agreements, but they are not the sole preserve of agile. Any team can successfully take the concept and make it work.

Teams with a diverse cast of characters often find team agreements valuable. Strong characters will often dominate meetings and discussions while the quieter ones don’t get a look-in.

Sometimes the same team will have different agreement bullet points in different projects. This can be because their original desired behaviours are so deeply ingrained, or just because different projects bring new and different challenges.

Backtrackin’ to the seventies

Back in the early seventies the Volvo Kalmar car production plant in Sweden allowed their teams to work however they wished. The teams self-governed and the only requirement was for each team to produce three cars per shift.

Team members could take any role they wished, take breaks whenever they wanted, each team even had their own facilities, including a sauna.

Self-governance and self-motivation was the key to making this arrangement possible and this could only be achieved by the agreement of all team members.

The plant was one of the most revolutionary and innovative of its time.

Why should you have one?

A team agreement will:

• Ensure you don’t waste your time on dealing with conflict
• Bring a sense of togetherness to the entire team, and reinforce the feeling that they are part of something special
• Help all members of the team to work in unison towards your common goal

What does a team agreement look like?

A team agreement is at its simplest a list of about five or six, easy to understand, bullet points. They are clear and not too long-winded, specific and not an abstract set of principles.

For example:

• All meetings will have a purpose and desired outcome i.e. to discuss approaches and make a decision
• During the meeting only one conversation must be happening at one time
• No interrupting or raised voices allowed
• Going off at tangents should be kept in check to ensure meeting goals are achieved, team members are allowed to ‘fast-forward’ the conversation
• All meetings will end on a happy note

The points can be anything team members want and agree on. The example above relates to meeting best practices. But they can be focused on work principles, such as:

• All code will be peer-reviewed
• Code will adhere to the specified guidelines

Or…

• Marketing brand guidelines will be followed for presentations outside of the team
• Internal documents will be functional with no design applied

Simple and quick creation method

Draft your team agreement at one of the earliest meetings of the team. It is important that you start as you mean to go on and get it done early. Work practices become effective the sooner they are agreed upon, ideally before work actually starts.

Use my four stage quick and bullet-proof team agreement creation method:

Brainstorm

• The pre-determined facilitator (or agile scrum-master) gathers the team and introduces the session
• Post-it notes are distributed to each member of the group
• The group spends a few minutes getting their ideas down – one idea per sticky

Discuss

• Each team member sticks their ideas up on a wall or board, where there is enough space to organize and categorise them
• The facilitator works through the ideas, grouping them as they go into similar buckets and putting duplicates to one side
• Each person explains the origin behind their idea and why they think it merits making it into the team agreement

Prioritise

• The ideas are ordered with higher priority ones at the top
• Revisit the ideas towards the bottom of list, some may be too granular or even too vague
• Place outvoted ideas into a ‘parking lot’

Commit

• The facilitator takes a final run through the list of ideas that have made the cut. This time expanding or tweaking the wording as necessary for the team agreement. Often the ideas will develop, usually the post-it will be in short-hand anyway
• The team gives their commitment to abiding by the rules that they have suggested, evaluated, and prioritized

Voila, you have your team agreement in one easy 20-30 min session!

What is the key to success?

As you may have deduced by now, the key to success is securing the buy-in of all team members. If they create and commit together, they will take abiding by it seriously. Rogue behaviour will be self-policed, or at the very least flagged for attention.

Start as you mean to go on. In the early days it’s worthwhile putting the team agreement on the wall or on screen while you’re in discussion. In no time at all abiding by the principles will become second nature.

Do you have a team agreement?

Do you have a great method for creating one that you can share in the comments below?

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