This Team Charter Software Development document shows how Eduardo Montes and the ProjectAdm development team established their shared working agreements, communication norms, decision-making processes, and Definition of Done at the project kickoff on January 15, 2025. This team charter was the social contract that governed how the seven-person distributed team worked together across 28 sprints — covering everything from meeting norms to conflict resolution to the coding standards that kept 152,400 lines of code consistent across six contributors.

What Is a Team Charter?

A Team Charter is a PMBOK 8 output in the Team Performance Domain that establishes the team's shared values, agreements, and operating guidelines. It is co-created by the team at project initiation and defines the norms of collaboration: how decisions are made, how conflicts are resolved, what communication channels are used for what types of messages, what the team's Definition of Done means, and what behaviors are expected from all team members. A team charter accelerates the Forming and Norming stages of team development by making implicit expectations explicit — reducing friction and improving cohesion from the first sprint.

What This Team Charter Software Development Includes

The ProjectAdm Team Charter covers all essential working agreements for the seven-person Scrum team:

• Team Purpose and Values — Purpose: Build a world-class SaaS project management platform that solves real problems for real teams; Core values: Technical excellence (no shortcuts on quality), Psychological safety (all ideas welcome, no blame culture), Ownership (if you see a problem, you own it until resolved), Transparency (bad news early is better than bad news late)
• Working Hours and Availability — Core hours: 9am–5pm BRT Monday–Friday; Eduardo Montes available until 7pm BRT for async decisions; Slack response: within 2 hours during core hours; PTO: minimum 2 weeks notice for planned leave; unplanned absence: notify Eduardo via Slack by 8am
• Communication Norms — Slack: async communication, non-urgent; daily standup (Google Meet, 9am BRT, max 15 min); sprint review (biweekly, 2hr); no meeting Wednesdays (deep work day); architecture decisions: async RFC in Notion before implementation; all decisions with >1 sprint impact documented in meeting minutes
• Definition of Done — Story is "Done" when: unit tests written and passing; code peer-reviewed by at least 1 team member; PR approved and merged to main; deployed to staging; QA sign-off by Lucas Park; no new PHPUnit failures; accessibility check (WCAG 2.1 AA) for UI stories; cross-browser test (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) for frontend stories
• Decision-Making Process — Technical decisions (<2 sprint stories): team member owns, documents in Notion RFC; Technical decisions (>2 stories): architecture review with Marcus Webb + Henry Douglas; Scope decisions: Henry Douglas as PO has final say, Eduardo as SM facilitates; Budget: Eduardo up to $5K, CCB above
• Conflict Resolution — Step 1: direct conversation between parties (24 hours); Step 2: Eduardo Montes facilitated discussion (48 hours); Step 3: Henry Douglas mediation (final); one conflict escalated to Step 2 (Sprint 5, architecture approach) — resolved in 1 facilitated session; no Step 3 escalations across 28 sprints
• Coding Standards — PHP: PSR-1, PSR-4, PSR-12 enforced via PHP-CS-Fixer in CI; JavaScript: ESLint with custom rule set; database: snake_case naming, all foreign keys indexed; Git: GitFlow branching, conventional commits, no force-push to main; code review: comment kindly, approve or request changes — no neutral review

How Eduardo Montes Used This Team Charter Software Development

Eduardo Montes referenced the Team Charter Software Development document three times outside routine ceremonies: in Sprint 5 when the architecture conflict occurred (the conflict resolution process resolved it in 36 hours); in Sprint 18 when an ISS-001 workaround was proposed that would have violated the "no shortcuts on quality" value (Eduardo used the charter to support the team's decision to invest in proper request queuing instead); and at the Sprint 28 final retrospective, where the team rated all four charter values as "highly relevant." The team charter was the most referenced single document after the Risk Register across the entire project.

How to Use This Team Charter Software Development Document

When creating your own Team Charter Software Development document, co-create it with the team rather than presenting it as a completed document. The ProjectAdm charter was built in a 2-hour kickoff workshop where every team member contributed at least one working agreement. Co-creation generates buy-in and ensures the agreements reflect actual team needs rather than PM preferences.

Download the Template and Deepen Your Knowledge

Ready to create your own team charter? Download the blank Team Charter Template (PMBOK 8).

• Download the Team Charter Template — PMBOK 8 (blank, ready to use)
• Read the full guide: Team Charter in PMBOK 8

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.

Format: Microsoft Word (.docx) | Project: Software Development (SaaS Platform) | PMBOK Edition: 8th (2025) | Domain: Team