Working Agreement for Beginners: Pick 5 Team Rules for Chat, Meetings, Decisions, Time Off

A 4 to 7 person team mixing remote and office days uses this working agreement template for beginners to end small annoyances like slow replies and late meeting starts. The whiteboard has four pages - page 1 sets the purpose and time and gets every problem out, page 2 sorts them into communication, meetings, decisions, and time off while everyone writes rule ideas at once, page 3 narrows them to 5 rules with up to 3 circle stamps each, and page 4 names a watcher and a review date per rule and checks with KPT (Keep, Problem, Try) whether it was kept. Members of a limited-visibility team can write on the board together. The task board has four columns - Up next, In progress, Waiting for review, Done - with 4 parent tasks and 3 subtasks each. Even if you have never written a working agreement, following this order gets you 5 rules in one hour, and each review date decides what to keep or change.