September 7, 2026 · 7 min read
TL;DR: The team charter, ground rules and working agreements are keyed 15 times and wrong 10 times across the bank. That is a rare positive lean in the People domain. Every keyed instance has a team whose way of working together is undefined, unsafe or quietly unfair, and the team agrees the fix. The ten distractors offer the charter for a problem it does not govern, or have the project manager enforce it, which hollows it out.
Most People-domain artefacts in this bank are traps more often than not. The team charter is the exception, and it is worth understanding why, because the exception has a boundary and the exam tests both sides of it.
When the team has no agreed way to behave, decide or hand over, and the stem describes the damage.
No way to decide anything. A mobile-app team is storming: some insist the process must run a certain way, others have been overruled and refuse to take part, and a prototype is due within weeks. Keyed is a team meeting that facilitates a team charter with ground rules. The explanation says the problem is not that these people dislike each other, it is that they have no agreed way to decide anything, and a rule the team wrote itself is one it will hold itself to. An emotional-intelligence course treats the symptom as a deficit in the individuals and delivers over months.
Borrowed specialists who have never been a team. A team drawn from across the functional business, few of whom have worked on a project before, is producing miscommunication and rework. Keyed is helping them set vision, objectives, roles and ways of working, which the option names as a team charter. They know their jobs. What is missing is agreement on who decides what and who hands work to whom, and role training addresses a competence gap the stem does not describe.
Unfairness the team can fix. A senior member takes all the interesting backlog items. Keyed is asking the team to agree ground rules for how work is shared out. A rotation rule imposed by the project manager and a private word about fairness both lose, because a self-organising team sets its own working agreements. A team member covering a six-hour time-zone offset alone is being worn down by an informal agreement to answer messages within the hour. Keyed is bringing it back to the team to revisit the working agreement itself, not telling that person to opt out privately or asking them to shift their hours.
Safety. Junior engineers go quiet when the principal architect presents and voice their doubts privately afterwards. Keyed is setting ground rules that invite questions and alternative views, and modelling constructive disagreement yourself. A team member repeats retrospective remarks to a functional manager, and the keyed pair is meeting the whole team to revisit the ground rules on keeping the environment safe and speaking to the individual about what may be shared outside it.
Timing. An agile project has its charter signed, its project manager appointed and its team named but not started. Keyed first action: work with the team to develop the team charter, so that it governs the work rather than describing it afterwards. And when the charter covers vision, mission, meeting times and behaviour, the keyed next step is to agree and add the definition of done, because the charter says nothing yet about the one thing every piece of work will be judged against.
When the problem is assignments, stakeholders outside the team, a contract dispute, or trust, and when the project manager is offered enforcing the charter in place of the team owning it.
The problem is who does what. A virtual team has clear roles yet keeps arguing about who is responsible for what. A team charter with a conflict resolution mechanism is offered and loses to creating a RACI chart with the team. The charter records ground rules and how conflict is handled. The RACI records the assignments themselves.
The problem is outside the team. A new project manager senses resistance among stakeholders across the firm and wants a tool to map it. Establishing ground rules is offered and loses to the stakeholder engagement assessment matrix, because ground rules govern how a team behaves together and do nothing about stakeholders outside it. Three years into a build-own-operate-transfer arrangement, a client insists on a contract change the delivery firm rejects. Ground rules lose to claims administration, which reaches a dispute between two contracting organisations.
The problem is trust on a remote team. Building trust among members who never meet face to face is asked, and establishing ground rules loses to team-building activities. Rules set expectations. Trust comes from working relationships and ongoing contact.
The charter is offered as a substitute for engagement. A team ran a workaround for two iterations without the product owner knowing, and the product owner now objects. Adding sound ground rules to the charter and correcting deviations early is offered and loses to engaging the product owner regularly, because a document of ground rules is a weaker safeguard than the ongoing collaboration it is meant to describe.
Common trap: the project manager enforcing the charter. A member publicly reopens an agreed decision and says they will not comply, and supporting decisions is in the charter. Taking the member aside to tell them to support it, and pointing out in the meeting that they have violated a ground rule, are both offered. Both lose to scheduling a follow-up meeting and advising the team to take ownership of the charter. The explanation is the rule for the whole slice: the charter is the team's document, so enforcement belongs to the team, and a project manager who adjudicates it turns the team's commitments into someone else's rules. The bank offers the project manager as the charter's enforcer twice in that one item and keys neither, and the explanation says why rather than leaving the options marked wrong.
The exam expects you to know that the team writes the team charter, that it holds values, working agreements and ground rules, and that it is kept apart from the project charter.
| Question | Answer the bank keys |
|---|---|
| Where does a rule banning political discussion in meetings go? | The team charter, not the project charter or the resource management plan |
| Which document covers values, ground rules and working agreements? | The team charter |
| Who creates and owns it? | The team; it is not sent to the sponsor for sign-off |
| What is NOT in an agile team charter? | The schedule and cost performance indices |
| Which four questions does an agile team charter answer? | Why are we doing this, who benefits, what does done mean, how will we work together |
| Can a stakeholder meeting agree ground rules? | Yes, when the aim is to secure the involvement of resistant stakeholders and surface their issues early |
The last row keeps the boundary honest. Ground rules agreed with stakeholders at a kick-off meeting are keyed when the point is engagement. What the bank rejects is ground rules offered as a tool for mapping or managing stakeholder resistance from a distance.
When is the team charter the keyed answer on the PMP exam? When the problem is how the team works together and nobody has agreed it: a storming team with no way to decide anything, a senior member taking all the interesting items, junior engineers going quiet in design reviews, a working agreement that quietly disadvantages one person. The charter is keyed because the team writes it and holds itself to it.
When are ground rules the wrong answer? When the dispute is about who is responsible for what, which needs a RACI chart; when the resistance comes from stakeholders outside the team; when a contested contract change needs claims administration; or when the project manager is offered enforcing the charter in place of the team owning it.
What goes in a team charter? Values such as a sustainable pace and core hours, working agreements such as what ready and done mean, and ground rules for meetings and behaviour. It is created and owned by the team, kept separate from the project charter, and does not carry performance indices such as SPI or CPI.
A working agreement lives only in a squad that is about to dissolve. What happens to it? It dies with the squad unless it is written into the standing procedure the wider organisation works to. The bank keys doing exactly that before the squad disbands, so a practice that carries a published commitment outlives the team that invented it.
PMP Practice's 2,141 questions are certified against PMBOK 8 and the July 2026 ECO, with every wrong answer explained rather than just marked wrong. Start the free 20-question sample — no card, no signup required to try it.
Related reading: RACI, Resource Assignment, and Acquiring a Team You Don't Control and Tuckman's Stages of Team Development. Team tasks are mapped on the People domain study page.
When is the team charter the keyed answer on the PMP exam?
When the problem is how the team works together and nobody has agreed it: a storming team with no way to decide anything, a senior member taking all the interesting items, junior engineers going quiet in design reviews, a working agreement that quietly disadvantages one person. The charter is keyed because the team writes it and holds itself to it.
When are ground rules the wrong answer?
When the dispute is about who is responsible for what, which needs a RACI chart; when the resistance comes from stakeholders outside the team; when a contested contract change needs claims administration; or when the project manager is offered enforcing the charter in place of the team owning it.
What goes in a team charter?
Values such as a sustainable pace and core hours, working agreements such as what ready and done mean, and ground rules for meetings and behaviour. It is created and owned by the team, kept separate from the project charter, and does not carry performance indices such as SPI or CPI.