Team contract

Author

inside_investigators

Rationale

Teams work better when members have a common understanding of the team’s goals and expectations for collaboration. The purpose of this activity is to help your team making a plan for working together during lab and outside of the scheduled lab time. Each team member will have some ideas about how a team should operate. These ideas may be very different. This is your opportunity to share your thoughts and ideas to promote optimal team function and prevent misunderstandings in the future.

Instructions

Discuss each of the items below as a team. Have one person act as the recorder and type the team’s decisions in this document. Be sure the team agrees on an item before it is added to the document.

Once the document is complete, the recorder should render, commit, and push the team agreement to GitHub. All team members can refer to this document throughout the semester.

Goals

  • What are your team goals for this project?

Our team goals for this semester are to communicate well, work efficiently, collaborate, and complete the project to the best of our ability.

  • What do you want to accomplish? What skills do you want to develop or refine?

We want to complete the project to the best of our ability and to learn more about statistics and manipulating data sets.

Expectations

Meetings

  • Meeting times: Identify a 1 - 2 hour weekly block outside of lab where the team can meet to work on assignments. All team members should block off this time on their calendar in case the team needs to meet to work on the project. Note: If you are unable to find a weekly time when the team can meet, briefly outline a plan to work on assignments outside of lab.

We will set aside Sunday from 2 pm to 3 pm to work outside of lab.

  • Meeting location: Identify how or where the team will meet to work together (e.g. in-person, Zoom, Facetime, Google Hangouts). Be sure every member is able to access the in-person and/or virtual meeting space.

We will meet on facetime or Zoom.

Communication

  • Method of communication: Identify the team’s primary method of communication outside of meetings (e.g. GroupMe, Slack, text messages, etc.). Be sure all members are able to access the team’s chosen communication platform.

We have created a group chat on iMessage and will use this to communicate.

  • Notifying team members: How should someone notify the other members if they are unable to attend lab or a scheduled team meeting?

Individuals should text the group chat prior to lab or meeting 24 hours in advance or as early as possible if unable to attend.

Workflow

While it’s not productive to divvy up the entire project work at the beginning and bring all the pieces together at the end, there will be times throughout the semester you might decide to divvy up smaller portions of the work among the team members.

  • By when should everyone have their portion of the work completed? Keep in mind your team will want to have time to review each portion before turning it in to make sure all pieces make sense together and any writing is cohesive.

Each person should have their work completed by Sunday at 8 pm.

  • How should team members communicate if they’re struggling with the portion of the work assigned to them?

Team members can text our group chat if they are struggling and need help with their portion of the work.

Policies & procedures

What rules can you agree on to help you meet your goals and expectations?

Everyone should follow clear and open communication, complete their work on time, and not be afraid to seek help if needed.

Consequences

How will you address non-performance in regard to these goals, expectations, policies and procedures?

If a team member is not meeting goals or expectations, we will sit down and discuss this as a team. If this does not amount to anything, we will seek help from TAs or the instructor, if necessary.

Additional items

Use the remaining space for any other items the team would like to discuss or plan out.

None at this time.

We share these goals and expectations, and agree to these policies, procedures, and consequences.

Team member name: Devesh Shah

Team member name: Libby Gough

Team member name: Sierra Stubbs

Team member name: Will Creamer