What is a Working Agreement?

Why do we need Working Agreements in Agile World?

Forming a set of working agreements can be considered as the first step for creating positive and productive team dynamics.

A well-written working agreement promotes a culture of understanding and respect, along with an increased share of responsibility.

Working agreements should be written with a collaborative mindset, created by all, not imposed from above. In order to get the most out of this activity, all forms of working agreements need to be discussed and decided together, and maybe more importantly, all working agreements should evolve with the team.

A working agreement is simply a word document file that is stored on a shared network like on a cloud so they can all have access to it easily.

How to write an effective working agreement?   
1. Focus on creating a common ground   
2. Define shared protocols and patterns of interaction

Important to have in a working agreement:   
1. Type of the team (is it Scrum, Kanban, XP, etc..)   
2. When and where their Daily scrum is being held?   
3. How many weeks are their sprints?   
4. Which day is their first day of each sprint?   
5. The definition of done(DoD)   
6. Roles and responsibilities   
7. Values & principles (it is good to have the Agile and Scrum values written)

Click here for a Working Agreement Example