Team Contract

Create a team contract that specifies how your team will operate.

Here are some suggestions for items to include

• Choose a team name to replace the pro forma one (e.g. Team B) that you were given.

• Decide on a weekly meeting time.

• Decide how to organize your team's folder on Google Drive.

• Agree upon a team manager charged with making things happen—facilitating meetings, providing team materials, wrangling technology, dividing work, etc. You can rotate this job—or not.

• Perform process checks, as often as every meeting, to keep the team healthy.

• Arrange methods for remote participation.

• Specify desired individual behaviors, e.g.

  • Attending meetings on time

  • Working hard

  • Respecting and helping others

  • Reading the text and assignment before starting to work

Learning goals:

• Understand the concept and goals of team contracts.

• Become organized for work.

Process:

1. Meet, learn about each other, share expectations with one another, select a team name, and write a one-page contract using the template and examples from another class.

2. Upload it to your team's folder which is linked on the Important Links page. Choose an informative name with your own names appended, e.g. Concept_Lastname1_Lastname2_Lastname3.

Optional Reading

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, This is an easy-to-read book with good advice.

• The One Minute Manager Builds High Performing Teams. This is an easy-to-read book with good advice.

• Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing, the unavoidable stages of team process

• Team Trust Survey, an interactive pdf one can fill out to assess a team's level of trust

Grading:

This is graded as Pass/Fail.