Organize the Project Team
Every team needs to agree on the team goals and how the team will work together to achieve those goals. One way to do this is to document the team guidelines and project ground rules. In WWPMM, these guidelines and ground rules are recorded in a document called the team charter.
The exercise of developing the team charter moves the team through the forming stage of group development into the storming, norming, and performing stages. Team members who join the team after the charter has been written must also understand and support it.
Team Charter
As the project manager, you must ensure that your team members are working together on the items that are important to you. The team charter helps you to do that by documenting the broad performance objectives, roles, responsibilities, and ground rules for the team, and the expectations for the project.
The team charter is divided into several sections:
Team performance objectives
The team objectives and the expectations for the project are documented in this section.
Rules of behavior
The characteristics that are important to the team are documented in this section. Some of the categories that are found in this section are behaviors, timeliness, respect, commitment, openness, and availability.
Rules of engagement
This section documents meeting, decision-making, and discussion protocols; support of agreements; document control; and escalation procedures.
Useful information
The roles and responsibilities for the team members are documented in this section, as are other items, including communication management, labor claiming codes, and key contacts.
A WWPMM work product description and a template are available to assist you in creating a team charter work product.
You can find them along with descriptions and templates for all WWPMM work products, at the WWPMM Web site.