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Team charter template
A team charter is a short written agreement, made by a standing team with its sponsor, that says why the team exists, what it owns, how it is measured, which decisions it makes on its own and how it works together. This template fits a cell, a shift team or a standing improvement team on one page: purpose, scope in and out, members and roles, customers, the KPIs the team owns with baseline and target, decision rights in three columns (decide and act, decide after consulting, escalate), team norms, meeting cadence, resources and budget authority, how the charter is reviewed, and sign-off. Page 2 explains how to write it with the team rather than for it, lists the review checks and shows a worked example for a press shop day shift team. The Excel version keeps the charter with checks on the decision rights and a review date that turns due soon or overdue, and a KPI tracker by month with the value for the status month, the gap to target, months on target and the share of KPIs on target, with a chart.
Free to use: print it, copy it and edit it for your team. Enter your name and work email once to download.
When to use it
When to use a team charter template
- When a new cell, shift team or standing improvement team is set up, before its first month of work.
- When a team leader keeps being asked to approve small decisions the team could make itself.
- When a team is given KPIs but nobody agreed the baseline, the target or who owns each one.
- After a reorganization, a new team leader or a change of scope, when people are unsure what the team owns.
How to fill it in
- 1
Write it with the team
Hold one or two sessions at the team's board, with the sponsor there at the start. A charter written for a team, and handed to it, is rarely kept.
- 2
Start with purpose and customers
Ask who receives the team's work and what they need from it. Write the purpose in one or two sentences the team would say itself.
- 3
Agree the scope, in and out
List what the team owns and what it does not, with who owns it instead, so nobody expects the team to change the schedule or repair the dies.
- 4
Pick the KPIs the team owns
Three to five measures the team can move, each with a baseline from real data, a target, a date and one owner. Track them by month.
- 5
Sort the decisions into A, B and C
List the decisions that come up in a normal month and place each one: decide and act, decide after consulting a named person, or escalate to a named person. Agree it with the sponsor in the room.
- 6
Write the norms, set the cadence, sign it
The team writes its norms in its own words and sets its meetings. Everyone signs, and the next review date goes on the charter.
Reviewing the charter
The 7 checks at each team charter review
On page 2 of the PDF and on the Review checks sheet in Excel. Go through them with the team on the review date, and change the charter where a check fails.
Charter review
At each review date, or sooner when the scope, members or goals change
- 1The purpose still says what the team's customers need from it
- 2Scope in and out still match the work the team really does
- 3Members and roles are current, including new starters and leavers
- 4Every KPI has a baseline, a target and one owner, and the team sees it every day
- 5Decision rights checked against real decisions since the last review
- 6The team still keeps its norms; add or drop one where needed
- 7Meetings ran at the planned cadence, and the resources were there
A filled-in example
Illustrative, not a benchmarkAn example: the press shop day shift team, 12 people running presses P1 to P4, wrote its charter with the production manager as sponsor on April 1, 2026. Baselines are January to March 2026 averages (illustrative numbers).
- Scope out: die and press repairs stay with the toolroom and maintenance, and the schedule with planning, so the team does not wait on decisions it cannot make.
- Decision rights: 4 decisions at A (such as job order within the shift and stopping a press for a safety or quality concern), 3 at B (such as overtime, after consulting the production manager) and 4 at C (such as schedule changes, which go to planning).
- KPIs in September: near misses reported 8 a month (baseline 2, target 6), scrap 1.7% (2.4%, target 1.5%), schedule attainment 96% (88%, target 95%), die change 29 minutes (42, target 30), and 6 of 8 operators qualified on three or more presses (3, target 6).
- 4 of 5 KPIs were on target in September. Scrap was still 0.2 points above its target, down 0.7 from the baseline.
- KPIs on target by month, April to September: 0, 0, 1, 0, 2 and 4 of 5.
Scrap is the one KPI still off target going into the first review, due on October 1, 2026: six months after the charter date, the template's example interval. On September 30 the Excel version shows the review as due soon, 1 day away.
Common mistakes
The manager writes it alone
A charter handed to a team describes what the manager wants. Write it with the people who will work to it, and let them word the norms.
Decision rights left vague
Telling a team it can decide more changes nothing on its own. Name the decisions and put each one in A, B or C, with the person consulted or deciding.
Too many KPIs, or ones the team cannot move
Ten measures, or a plant-level number the team has no hand in, give nobody a target to work on. Three to five the team can move is enough.
Signed once, never read again
Put the review date on the charter and check it against the real decisions and results of the last months. Change it when the scope or members change.
Download the template
Free to use: print it, copy it and edit it for your team. Enter your name and work email once to download.
Run this template in LeanSuite
In LeanSuite each team's huddle runs on a Lean Studio board where the team enters its KPIs, assigns actions with owners and due dates, and escalates unresolved items to the next tier with one click.
In the lean glossary
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FAQ
Team charter template: common questions
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