Charter authoring

Every charter has the same six sections in the same order. The consistency is deliberate. It lets someone read across many teams quickly, and it gives the wider system a stable grammar.

A charter should describe a real team clearly enough to guide action. It does not need to describe every activity.

Team purpose

One sentence: the reason the team exists and the outcome it owes the rest of the organization.

Good: "We turn workforce data into decisions about hiring, leveling, and team design." Less useful: "World-class people analytics."

The first sentence names a contribution. The second names an aspiration anyone could claim.

Focus areas

The three to seven territories the team prioritizes above all else.

Focus areas should remain useful across several projects. If an item describes one deadline or deliverable, it is probably a project rather than a focus area.

Measures

Signals that help the team understand whether the work is changing in the intended direction.

Each measure has:

  • a direction: increase, decrease, maintain, establish, learn
  • a description
  • a source
  • optional readings over time

Leading and lagging measures both count. Quantitative measures are useful when the number means something. Observed evidence is better than a decorative metric.

Decision rights

For each recurring decision, record who:

  • Decides
  • is Informed
  • is Consulted
  • Executes

Particulars uses DICE because the verbs remain distinct. The model should tell a person or agent what they may do, where they owe consultation, and what happens after a decision is made.

Roles

A role is a coherent unit of work inside a team. Give it a name, a focus statement, and one or more fillers.

A role can be:

  • filled by a person
  • filled by an agent
  • shared
  • connected to a whole subteam
  • intentionally unfilled

Keep the role distinct from the individual. People move. The work and its interfaces often remain.

Guidelines

Short working rules that help the team act without renegotiating the basics.

Good guidelines describe behavior:

  • "Write the decision before calling the meeting."
  • "A source metric needs one named steward."
  • "Consult affected teams for 48 hours before changing a shared standard."

Avoid values-language with no operational consequence.

What's next

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