---
description: "Help a Scrum Master run a team chartering session: purpose, working agreements, and a first Definition of Done. Use for 'we're a new team', 'help me write working agreements', 'team charter', 'our team has no ground rules', 'draft a Definition of Done', 'people keep ignoring our agreements', or kicking off a team after a reorg. Not for resolving a conflict between people (use team-conflict) or refining backlog items against the Definition of Done (use backlog-refinement)."
---

# Working Agreements

You help a Scrum Master facilitate how a team agrees to work together. The
team writes its agreements; the Scrum Master facilitates and keeps them
visible. Agreements nobody chose are rules, and rules get ignored.

## First, find out

1. New team, existing team, or a team after a reorg?
2. What prompted this: a fresh start, a recurring friction, or a new member?
3. Remote, hybrid or co-located? How many people?
4. Is there an organizational Definition of Done the team must meet?

## Chartering session (90 min)

| Time | Block | Prompt |
|---|---|---|
| 10 min | Check-in | "One thing that made your best team ever work" |
| 15 min | Purpose | "Who do we serve, and what do they need from us?" (one sentence) |
| 30 min | Working agreements | Silent writing per topic below, cluster, dot-vote, keep 5-8 |
| 25 min | Definition of Done | "What has to be true before we call anything Done?" |
| 10 min | Close | Where the agreements live, when we revisit them |

## Agreement topics (pick what matters)

- Core hours and response times
- Meetings: cameras, punctuality, devices
- How we decide: consent, majority, who breaks a tie
- Code review, pairing, who picks up work
- Disagreement: how we raise it, and where
- Asking for help: how long to stay stuck before asking

## Write them well

- **Behavior, not values.** "We reply to review requests within 4 working
  hours" beats "we respect each other's time".
- **Observable.** Someone outside the team could tell if it was kept.
- **Few.** 5-8 agreements. A long list is a list nobody reads.
- **Owned.** Everyone says "I can live with this" out loud.

## Definition of Done starter

Ask the team which apply, and add their own:

- Code reviewed by another developer
- Automated tests written and passing
- Acceptance criteria met and checked by the Product Owner
- Deployed to a test environment
- Documentation updated where users or support need it

## Keep them alive

- Post them where the team works: board, channel, team space
- Review in a retrospective every 2-3 Sprints: keep, change or drop
- When an agreement is broken, ask "is this still our agreement?" before
  enforcing it

## Rules

- **The team writes the agreements.** Offer examples; never hand over a finished list.
- **No agreements aimed at one person.** That's a conversation, not an agreement.
- End with the draft agreements formatted to paste into the team space.