Working Agreements
Explicit team agreements about how members will work together and treat each other.
Also known as: Team agreements, Team norms, Team contract
Category: Techniques
Tags: collaboration, teams, norms, agreements, facilitation
Explanation
Working agreements are explicit, team-created guidelines about how team members will work together. Unlike imposed rules, they are collaboratively developed and owned by the team. Common areas covered include: communication norms (response times, meeting etiquette), collaboration practices (code review processes, pair programming), decision-making approaches, conflict handling, and work-life boundaries. Effective working agreements are: specific enough to be actionable, few enough to remember, regularly reviewed and updated, and genuinely agreed upon (not just accepted). Benefits include: reduced friction from unclear expectations, faster norm establishment for new members, and reference point for addressing issues. The process of creating agreements is as valuable as the agreements themselves - it surfaces assumptions and creates shared understanding. For knowledge workers, working agreements help: reduce ambiguity, align expectations, and create shared accountability for team culture.
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