A working agreement is an explicit set of norms a team adopts about how it will operate together — how decisions are made, how meetings are run, what response times are expected, how disagreements are handled, how on-call works. The agreement is written down, agreed to, and revisited periodically.
Working agreements are distinct from policies. Policies come from above and apply across the organization. Working agreements are team-level and team-owned. They reflect the operational reality of how this particular team chooses to work, often in ways that diverge from organizational defaults.
For distributed teams, working agreements are especially valuable because they replace the implicit conventions that build up in co-located teams. Things that go unsaid in offices have to be said in distributed teams, or they go unobserved.
Why Working agreement Matters for Distributed Teams
Most team friction comes from implicit, conflicting assumptions about how the team should operate. Working agreements surface those assumptions and resolve them.
The act of writing the agreement is often more valuable than the document itself. The conversation forces the team to confront the disagreements they have been working around.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a working agreement?
A working agreement is an explicit set of norms a team adopts about how it will operate — decisions, meetings, response times, on-call, disagreement handling. It is team-level and team-owned, distinct from organization-wide policies.
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See working agreement in action.
StandIn is built around these concepts. Engineers publish declared state before going offline. The next shift starts with full context.