• Explore what charters/oaths are
• How are they appropriate to agile teams
• Are they applicable to the retrospective group

Facilitator: Tim Mackinnon

• What are Charters/Oaths
• Review some examples
• How do they help the group
• How do we create them?
• Try creating some for the retrospective gathering

• Boy Scout Oath
• Agile Manifesto

• A lawyer is bound by ethics, not a charter
• A charter is given from 1 institution to another (there are 2 parties)
• In Agile (or teams) - its an agreement by a team to an organisation
  • usually made clear before work begins
  • some charters include values
• Futureworks website has an example
• Insights from retrospectives often feedback into charters
• But writing this cown can cause problems (e.g. if not negotiable it will cause problems - it can be useful to keep it as a draft until the project ends)
• Changes occur when everyone agrees
• Q: How long will it take to update
  • A: Hard to predict, often at the end of each release but not normally at the end of each iteration
• Charter directs teams and:
  • gives them identity and focus
  • as well as a direction to deliver
  • unique contribution that this team gives
• Its sensible for both parties of a charter to participate
• Can take a starting point to a team, but they would normally amend it to sign up to it
  • e.g. who’s on the team, what docs to deliver etc.
• Q: How is a charter different from a mission statement (To investigate)
• How do you prevent people from throwing the charter back at you? You need some flexibility

• Traditionally the gathering has valued the rule of no rules
• Do we need an oath?
• Is the survival guide good enough?
• Is the prime directive good enough?
• Inclusive
• “I invite you to do X”
• Speaking up
• Come and be your whole human self
• Suspicion of command and control
• Values as aprirations
• Is the agile manifesto a good example (possibly)
• We would like to point to “the love” over pointing to “the law”
• Pattern community didn’t have a statement like the agile community and it hurt
• Tip: Stick to a max of 5 values
• Having written the values down it can radically change how we are (don’t do it lightly)
• Meta point: many questions about the survival guide. Is it an example of how words can cause unintended confusion
• There are many example from Zen

• In the bar, try the X over Y approach of the agile manifesto and seeing this draft resonates with anyone

• Tim Mackinnon (organizer)
• Diana
• Cope
• Marcus