Team Charter Template

Last updated: [ YYYY-MM-DD ]

Team Name: [Insert Project Name]

Team Members:

[Member 1 Name]
[Member 2 Name]
[Member 3 Name]
[Member 4 Name]
[Member 5 Name]

1. Project Summary

Use this section to convince the (non-technical) reader that your project solves an important problem, overcomes difficult technical challenges, and will have an audience (users) or social purpose. The reader should feel that you understand the problem area and have some interesting ideas for solving the problem (and current solutions fall short of your goal). Typical content (based on Small Business Innovation Grants from NSF, VC Initial seed funding or Series A funding pitches etc.) includes:

Audience/User: describe the expected audience/user for your project. Occupation, demographic, location etc.
Problem statement: What customer needs or market pain points are you addressing?
Value Proposition: What is the key differentiator of your product/technology?
Innovation: Describe your innovation. What aspects are original, unusual, novel, disruptive or transformative compared to the current state of the art?
Broader societal impact: is there a broader societal need you are trying to address with this project?

Your project summary should be in paragraph form and ~500 words

2. Project Objectives

Clearly state the overall purpose of your team and briefly describe your senior design project. This is similar to the project summary, but is more practical and concise rather than persuasive and aspriational. Specifically, use this section to identify how your project addresses the technical & algorithmic complexity bars required for senior design.

2.1 Specific Goals

Include a list of the specific components of your solution

Example for building ChatGPT:

AI Model: A generative language model trained on large amounts of public data that can accurately and safely respond to user queries.
Compute-efficient backend: A highly scalable backend that can run the ai model and intelligently handle batching requests to optimize gpu efficiency.
User-friendly web app: A website with a chat interface that allows users to interact with the model. The website should require authentication and use accounts to manage individual’s chat history

3. Roles and Responsibilities

3.1 Team Lead

Describe the different roles each team member will play and their primary focus area. Identify a “project lead” responsible for managing deadlines and organizing the rest of the team. Identify who is responsible for any logistics roles (managing sprint boards, etc). You can use the team lead section below as a starting point, but feel free to change it to meet your team’s needs.

The team lead, [Member Name], is responsible for managing team deadlines and keeping everyone on track. Their concrete responsibilities include:

reminding team members to post weekly status updates
take notes during meetings and share in slack channel
schedule time for team to sync
add any other duties here

3.2 Member Roles

Complete the member roles table

Member Name	Strengths	Technical Responsibilities
[Member 1]	ml, python	Training core language model
[Member 2]	ui, ux	Build front end, prototype chat interface

3.3 Logistics

Adjust this to assign team members tasks or define a rotation policy.

[Member] : responsible for creating weekly status update tickets and moving them to done as the sprint progresses
[Member] : responsible for taking notes during instructor meeting and posting them to slack
…

4. Communication Guidelines

4.1 Communication Tools

We will use slack for async communication between team members, mentors, and instructors
We will use Zoom for weekly meetings with instructors and mentors
We will use github projects to track sprint progress and post weekly updates
List any other communication tools you will use