This Team Charter example shows how Alex Morgan, PMP, established the shared values, working norms, and behavioral commitments for the six-person Project Phoenix team — a $72,250 website launch managed using the PMBOK Guide 8th Edition. The Team Charter was signed by all six team members on kickoff day, March 17, 2025, and it was the foundation of the high-performing, 4.3/5.0-rated team that delivered the project on time and under budget.

What Is a Team Charter?

A Team Charter is a document that establishes the team's shared purpose, values, working agreements, communication norms, decision-making approach, and conflict resolution process. It differs from a Project Charter (which authorizes the project) in that it governs how the team works together, not what the project is. In PMBOK 8, the Team Charter is addressed within the Team Performance Domain as a foundational tool for building a high-performing, collaborative team environment. Research consistently shows that teams with explicit working agreements outperform teams that rely on implicit norms — and the Team Charter is the mechanism for making those agreements explicit, visible, and mutually committed to.

What's Inside This Team Charter Example

This Team Charter example for Project Phoenix includes:

• Team purpose statement: "To deliver a world-class website that drives MCG's digital growth, while maintaining the highest standards of quality, collaboration, and professional integrity throughout the project"
• Team values: Transparency (no surprises — problems surface immediately), Quality (we don't ship what we wouldn't be proud of), Collaboration (no-blame culture, shared ownership of outcomes), and Delivery Focus (commitment to the June 13 date above all other considerations)
• Working norms: daily async standup update in Slack by 9:30 AM; 24-hour response SLA for any Slack message tagged as @urgent; meetings start on time and have an agenda shared 24 hours in advance; video on for all project meetings
• Decision-making: PM (Alex Morgan) has final authority on scope, schedule, and cost decisions; team consensus required for technical architecture decisions; any team member can raise a concern without needing to escalate first
• Conflict resolution: direct one-on-one conversation first; if unresolved within 24 hours, the PM facilitates a structured conversation; if unresolved, the Sponsor (Riley Park) is notified
• Individual commitments: each team member listed a specific behavioral commitment — John Tran committed to sharing architecture documentation by end of Week 2; Tom Nguyen committed to weekly QA progress updates in Confluence; Maya Chen committed to liaising with the content team every Monday

How Alex Morgan Used This Team Charter

The Team Charter was referenced at every sprint retrospective throughout Project Phoenix — not as a compliance document, but as a shared cultural touchstone. When a conflict arose in Week 2 over technical architecture choices (Sam and John had differing views on the React framework approach), the Team Charter's decision-making clause was invoked: technical architecture decisions require team consensus. Alex Morgan facilitated a 45-minute structured conversation that produced a documented decision rationale, preserved both team members' professional dignity, and became the basis of the Architecture Freeze document. The conflict that could have created resentment instead reinforced the team's commitment to the charter — and the working relationship between Sam and John was stronger after the resolution than before the disagreement.

Download and Customize

This Team Charter example is available as a free download. Use it as a reference to build your own team charter, or start with the blank template and fill it in for your project.

• Download the Team Charter Template — PMBOK 8 (blank, ready to use)
• Read the article: Team Charter in PMBOK 8 — Guide and Best Practices

Team Charter Example: Key Takeaways

The most important lesson from this Team Charter example is that the document's value comes from the conversation that produces it, not from the document itself. Alex Morgan facilitated a 90-minute team charter session on March 17 (kickoff afternoon) where every value, norm, and commitment was discussed and agreed by the team — not written by the PM and distributed for signature. That participatory process meant every team member had genuine ownership of the charter's contents, which is why the norms were actually followed rather than forgotten after Week 1. The 4.3/5.0 team performance score at project close, and the zero-blame culture documented in the lessons learned, were the measurable outcomes of that 90-minute investment on Day 1.

Want to go deeper? The PMBOK Guide 8th Edition is the definitive reference for modern project management. Get your copy and use it alongside these examples to build a solid, practical understanding of every performance domain.