Team Contract
A team contract is an agreement between you and your teammates about how your team will operate — a set of conventions that you plan to abide by. The questions below will help you consider what might go into your team contract. You should also think back to good or bad aspects of team project experiences you’ve already had.
Below are some questions to consider. Your contract doesn’t have to answer all the questions below, but must answer at least the boldfaced questions. Focus on the issues that your team considers most important.
All team members should write their names at the end of the contract, to indicate that they agree with it.
A skimpy team contract is a bad idea. If you have very little in your team contract, and your team has problems working together later in the group project, then your TA will not be sympathetic to your plight.
Goals
- What are the goals of the team?
- What are your personal goals for this assignment?
- What kind of obstacles might you encounter in reaching your goals?
- What happens if all of you decide you want to get an A grade, but because of time constraints, one person decides that a B will be acceptable?
- Is it acceptable for one or two team members to do more work than the others in order to get the team an A?
Meeting Norms
- Do you have a preference for when meetings will be held? Do you have a preference for where they should be held?
- How will you use the in-class time?
- How often do you think the team will need to meet outside of class? How long do you anticipate meetings will be?
- How will you record and distribute the minutes and action lists produced by each meeting?
Work Norms
- How much time per week do you anticipate it will take to make the project successful?
- How will work be divided among team members?
- How will deadlines be set?
- How will you decide who should do which tasks?
- Where will you record who is responsible for which tasks?
- What will happen if someone does not follow through on a commitment (e.g., missing a deadline, not showing up to meetings)?
- How will the work be reviewed?
- What happens if people have different opinions on the quality of the work?
- What will you do if one or more team members are not doing their share of the work?
- How will you deal with different work habits of individual team members (e.g., some people like to get assignments done as early as possible; others like to work under the pressure of a deadline)?
Decision Making
- Do you need consensus (100% approval of all team members) before making a decision?
- What will you do if one of you fixates on a particular idea?