Practice : Working Agreements
Purpose and Strategic Importance
Working Agreements are explicit, co-created guidelines that define how a team collaborates, communicates, and holds itself accountable. These agreements clarify expectations, reduce friction, and foster trust - creating a foundation for psychological safety, effective delivery, and team happiness.
By establishing shared norms, teams can work more smoothly, adapt more easily, and continuously improve their ways of working in a transparent and inclusive manner.
Description of the Practice
- Working Agreements define team-specific norms such as meeting etiquette, code review expectations, pairing frequency, or how to handle interruptions.
- They are created collaboratively - typically in a kickoff, retrospective, or reset session.
- Agreements are visible, lightweight, and regularly revisited as team dynamics evolve.
- They’re not rigid rules - they are team-owned social contracts to be refined over time.
How to Practise It (Playbook)
1. Getting Started
- Schedule a dedicated session to co-create agreements with the full team.
- Use prompts like “What helps you do your best work?” and “What should we avoid?” to spark discussion.
- Capture the top 5–10 items in a shared, visible space (e.g. team wiki, board, Miro).
- Agree how you’ll hold each other accountable - through reminders, retros, or check-ins.
2. Scaling and Maturing
- Revisit agreements quarterly or after major changes (e.g. team members, working patterns).
- Embed agreements into onboarding and team rituals (e.g. sprint planning, stand-ups).
- Share agreements with stakeholders to clarify how the team works best.
- Encourage psychological safety - agreements are tools for support, not enforcement.
- Use retrospectives to suggest amendments or reaffirm what’s working.
3. Team Behaviours to Encourage
- Speak up when norms are unclear or unhelpful.
- Use agreements to reset and repair when conflict arises.
- Balance flexibility with follow-through - treat them as living documents.
- Encourage diverse voices and needs in shaping how the team works.
4. Watch Out For…
- Agreements that are ignored or not revisited.
- One-size-fits-all norms imposed without discussion.
- Overly rigid or excessive rules that stifle autonomy.
- Lack of psychological safety to challenge or refine agreements.
5. Signals of Success
- The team works more smoothly and respectfully with fewer misunderstandings.
- Agreements are referenced, improved, and upheld by the team - not just managers.
- Conflicts are resolved more constructively using shared expectations.
- New joiners ramp up faster with clear team norms.
- Team satisfaction, trust, and effectiveness steadily improve.