World Standards Day: write your team's own
2026-10-14 · The Scrums team
Today the world's standards bodies celebrate the agreements that let things work together. Teams need a few agreements of their own. Here's how to write a working agreement that people actually keep.
October 14 is World Standards Day, when the international standards bodies mark the work behind the agreements most of us never think about: the size of a shipping container, the shape of a plug, the format of a date. Standards let strangers work together without negotiating every detail first.
Teams need the same thing, on a smaller scale. A working agreement is a short list of how the team works together, written down and agreed by everyone in it. It settles the questions that otherwise cause friction quietly, week after week.
What goes in one
Keep it to what actually causes friction. Common sections:
- Hours and availability: core hours when everyone is reachable, and how to say you're away.
- Communication: what goes in chat, what needs a call, and how quickly people are expected to reply.
- Meetings: which ones the team holds, how long they last, and whether cameras are expected.
- Decisions: who makes which ones, and where they're written down.
- Done: what "done" means for a piece of work.
Making it stick
A working agreement fails in one of two ways: it's written by one person and nobody else feels bound by it, or it's written once and never read again.
- Write it together. In Scrums, put it on a page shared with the team. Everyone can edit it at once, and comments on a particular line keep the debate next to the words it's about.
- Revisit it in retros. The Keep · Add · Less · More retro template is made for this: what to keep, what to add, and what to do more or less of.
- Point to it. Pin a link to it in the team's chat channel, so it's one click away when the question comes up again.
- Use your status. Scrums lets everyone set a status, an emoji and a few words such as "In a meeting" or "On holiday", until a time they choose. That makes "how to say you're away" easy to agree on.
Standards bodies take years to agree on a plug. Your team can agree on how it works in an afternoon. Sign up and write yours.
More on team docs in Scrums, and the Keep · Add · Less · More format.