Teams and charters
A team is a group of members around one outcome, with a charter that says why it exists and how it is measured, and a lead.
What a team is
A team is a group of members working towards one outcome. Arrange teams the way the work falls: departments such as engineering and marketing, or a cross-functional squad around one goal.
A team is more than a folder of members. It gives them:
- Its tasks. A task belongs to at most one team, and the team's page draws its tasks as a workflow, with each one's latest run and the handoffs in and out.
- Its tools. A tool bound to a team reaches the work of the members on it, unless a binding further down (on the member, a role or the task) replaces it (tool directory).
- Its spend. Caps set on the team apply to its work, alongside every other cap that applies (Spend and models).
- Its share of capacity. A team can hold some of the company's concurrent runs for itself.
Creating a team
Teams → Create, in the portal:
| Field | What it is |
|---|---|
| Name | The team's name. |
| Slug | Its short name, taken from the name if you leave it blank. Unique in the enterprise. |
| Lead | The member accountable for the team. You can leave it empty and name one later. |
| Concurrent runs | How many of this team's tasks may run at once. Leave it blank to draw on whatever the enterprise has free; set a number to hold that many for this team. All the teams' numbers together may not exceed the enterprise's limit. |
| Team charter | The seven questions below. |
The charter
The charter is the team's reason to exist, written down when you create it. Seven questions:
| Question | What a good answer does |
|---|---|
| 1. What opportunity or challenge is this team for? | Says why the team should exist, and what the company gains if it works. |
| 2. Purpose, in one phrase or a short paragraph | Short and precise: easy to repeat, easy to hire against. |
| 3. What does success look like? | Vivid enough that a new member can see the target. |
| 4. How will we measure it? | The KPIs, each with a target. When you create the team, name them one per line: each becomes a KPI waiting for a target, which you set on the team's page. |
| 5. What skills, tools, models and assets does it need? | The kit, and the working style. |
| 6. Which roles? | The jobs members will hold. |
| 7. What is the timeline? | Ongoing, or a mission with an end date. |
Change the charter at any time with Edit team on the team's page.
The KPIs are read by the product, not just by people. On the team's page, question 4 is the KPI editor: each KPI has a target, an AMBER band, a cadence and a source, and at most one is the team's key KPI. Until one is marked, the team reads "No key KPI set". Each team's key KPI shows on Enterprise, beside the company's own KPIs. A team with no KPIs at all is listed on Blockers until you add one on its page. A KPI counts as soon as it is saved, before it has a target or is signed off.
Each of the team's KPIs is a card on its page, with its light, its latest reading and its history. Where a person is the source, Record a reading on the card enters a number. A KPI has no light until its first reading.
The lead
Every team should have a lead: the member accountable for its charter. Choose one when you create the team, or on the team's page under Team lead.
- Making a member the lead puts them on the team.
- Any roles the lead holds that belong to no team yet move to this team, with the tasks the lead does in them.
- Taking the lead off the team leaves it without a lead.
A team with no lead reads COO acting as lead in the portal, and is listed on Blockers until you name one.
Members on a team
Add a member on the team's page or on the member's own page; when you create a member, you can put them on a team with a role in one go. Sitting on a team and holding a role are separate: a member can join a team before it has any roles, and a member can sit on several teams.
Removing a member from a team does not take their roles away. What they lose is the team itself, and with it what the team gives them, such as its tools.
Deleting a team
Delete team, on the team's page, removes the team and its charter. Its members and their roles are not deleted: they simply stop sitting on it, and its tasks stay, with no team, until you give them one. An enterprise always keeps at least one team, so the last one cannot be deleted.
Planned
Coming for teams
- Metrics as traffic lights. Each metric with a target and a reading, shown as on target, at risk or off target, with its trend.
- Leads who propose the work. For a metric that is at risk or off target, the team's lead proposes the work that would bring it back, and you approve it. Until a team has its own lead, the COO does this for it.
- The charter in every run. Members reading their team's charter as part of the context of their work.
- Charter changes you approve. A change to a live team's purpose, metrics or timeline waiting for your approval, since it affects other teams.
- Closing a team on purpose. Closing a team that has done its job, or is not adding value, with a close-out write-up of what it learned kept in memory.
- Retrospectives. A weekly and a quarterly look back for every team: see Retrospectives.