Home / Team charter template
Template
Team charter template
A team charter is a short agreement, written by the team, on why it exists, what it will deliver, who does what and how it will decide. This one fits on a page and ends with a date to look at it again.
By Gabriel Lopez · Updated October 26, 2026 · Every source is listed at the end
Fill in the template
Team charter
Fill it in as a team, in one sitting if you can. Short answers are better. It saves only in this browser, on this device, and is never sent anywhere.
Why does this team exist? One or two sentences a new member would understand.
Example: We move every customer on the old billing system to the new one without a missed invoice.
What will be different when we are done, and what will we look at to tell?
Example: All 1,200 accounts migrated by June; zero invoices sent late in the month after.
What is in, and what is explicitly out?
Who is on the team, what each person is responsible for, and who the sponsor is.
Which decisions the team makes itself, which need the sponsor, and what we do when we disagree.
Meetings, response times, where work is tracked, and how we raise a problem.
Budget, time, people and anything we cannot change.
When we will read this charter again and change what no longer fits.
Plain-text version to copy or print
TEAM CHARTER Purpose Why does this team exist? One or two sentences a new member would understand. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Outcomes and how we will know What will be different when we are done, and what will we look at to tell? ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Scope What is in, and what is explicitly out? ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Members and roles Who is on the team, what each person is responsible for, and who the sponsor is. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ How we decide Which decisions the team makes itself, which need the sponsor, and what we do when we disagree. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ How we work together Meetings, response times, where work is tracked, and how we raise a problem. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Resources and constraints Budget, time, people and anything we cannot change. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________ Review date When we will read this charter again and change what no longer fits. ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________
Get the editable version: this template as a Word file with a worked example, in the Change Toolkit. Or learn to use it on your own change in the course Leading Change with Evidence.
How to use it well
These steps are practice suggestions, not tested findings.
Write it with the team, not for it. A charter handed to a team is a memo. The value is in the conversation about what each field means.
Keep it to a page. If a field needs a paragraph, the team has not agreed yet. Leave it short and note the disagreement for the next meeting.
Make the outcomes checkable. "Improve onboarding" cannot be reviewed. "New starters productive by week three, measured by the checklist" can.
Say what is out of scope. Naming what is out now gives you something to point to when a new request arrives.
Decide how you decide. Write down which decisions the team can make without asking, and what happens when members disagree.
Put the review date in the calendar. Read the charter at that meeting and change what no longer fits. A charter nobody reads again stops describing the team.
What the research says
No study in the Evidence Library behind this site tests team charters, so treat this template as a practical tool, not a proven one. Two strands of evidence touch the problems a charter tries to solve.
Unclear roles go with lower performance. A meta-analysis of 169 samples (35,265 employees) found role ambiguity and situational constraints most strongly and negatively related to job performance among seven work stressors (Gilboa et al., 2008, rated Medium in the Evidence Library after a full-text read). The authors say most pooled studies were cross-sectional, so the direction of the effect cannot be settled. The members and roles field is there for this reason, and the RACI chart template goes further.
Team goals with feedback, in one small test. In a field experiment in one manufacturing plant, a cell that set a team defect-reduction goal, received daily performance feedback and built a group problem-solving routine reduced defect rates significantly compared with a control cell over 15 months (Longenecker et al., 1994, rated Medium from its abstract). There were only two cells, one per condition, so this is a narrow result. It is a reason to make the outcomes field measurable and to look at the measure often.
How it maps to the Unfrozen Loop
- Week 0Before you start
- 1Surface both ways
- 2Make sense together, top included
Writing the purpose and outcomes together is a form of making sense together. If the people above the team set the purpose, ask them to say out loud what it will cost.
- 3Start it close to the work
- 4Review on a rhythm, then hold the pace
The review date is the charter's own rhythm. At each review, ask whether the charter still describes how the team works, and change it if not.
- 5The middle’s own weather
- RingSafe to speak, and speaking changes something
Highlighted parts are the ones this idea speaks to. The mapping is my reading, not a tested finding. See the whole Loop and the evidence for each part.
Free lesson: Module 0 of Leading Change with Evidence, about 50 minutes.
Common questions
What should a team charter include?
Purpose, outcomes and how you will measure them, scope, members and roles, decision rules, ways of working, resources and constraints, and a date to review it. This template has a field for each.
What is the difference between a team charter and team norms?
A charter covers what the team is for and how it is organized, including purpose, scope, roles and decisions. Team norms cover day-to-day behavior, such as how meetings run and how people disagree. A short set of norms can sit inside the charter.
Is there research showing team charters work?
Not in the Evidence Library behind this site, which holds no study that tests team charters. The closest evidence is on role ambiguity, which a large meta-analysis found among the stressors most strongly linked to lower job performance, and on team goal setting with feedback, tested in one small field experiment.
Related
Sources
Entries marked (abstract read) were checked against the published abstract only; (full text read) means the Evidence Library read checked the full paper.
- Gilboa, S., Shirom, A., Fried, Y., & Cooper, C. (2008). A meta-analysis of work demand stressors and job performance: Examining main and moderating effects. Personnel Psychology, 61(2), 227-271. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2008.00113.x (full text read)
- Longenecker, C. O., Scazzero, J. A., & Stansfield, T. T. (1994). Quality improvement through team goal setting, feedback, and problem solving: A field experiment. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 11(4), 45-52. https://doi.org/10.1108/02656719410057944 (abstract read)