What are Working Agreements?

Working agreements are explicit commitments a team makes about how it will collaborate, communicate, make decisions, and handle the everyday friction of shared work. They turn assumptions about teamwork into visible agreements that can be discussed, improved, and held with care.

Good working agreements are practical and observable. They might cover meeting norms, response expectations, decision methods, conflict handling, availability, quality standards, or how the team will inspect and adapt its own behavior.

Working agreements are especially useful for distributed teams, newly formed teams, and groups navigating change. They help create clarity without relying on heavy process, and they give the team a shared reference point when behavior drifts from intent.

Want to put this into practice? nuAgility offers a self-paced course, Facilitating Collaborative Chartering for Teams, that helps teams create stronger charters and working agreements.

Want to talk through how this shows up in real teams and organizations? Join the Agile Community Network, nuAgility's free live community event and podcast, where practitioners discuss topics like this in the context of real work.