Every team already has rules. Most of them are unwritten, which means new people learn them by getting them wrong. A charter writes them down.
Five sections, one page
- Why the team exists, in one sentence
- What the team owns and what it does not
- How decisions get made
- How the team communicates and when
- How disagreement is handled
Review the charter every quarter. If nobody has looked at it in three months, it is decoration, not an agreement.
