Working practice

Working agreement

A short written set of rules a team commits to about how it works.

Definition

An explicit agreement covering response times, meeting norms, where decisions get recorded, how work is picked up, and what to do when someone is blocked. It is written by the team rather than imposed, and revisited when it stops matching reality.

Why it matters

With outsourced staff the unwritten rules are exactly the ones nobody transmits, so people are judged against expectations they were never told. An hour spent writing this down at the start prevents most of what later gets called a culture mismatch.