Team Charter
Keeping the Adidas Running & Training app's UX design teams engaged and rowing in the same direction
Main goals
Establish a shared understanding of the team’s purpose, values, and working style at a time of significant changes.
Act on engagement survey feedback to boost team satisfaction.
Main contributions
Co-led a team charter creation for a 12-person UX design team.
Planned project, ran workshops, edited the content, and co-created the charter.
Open discussions led to team engagement and retention.
Major organizational shifts affected the UX Design team's collaboration, morale and momentum.
Leading up to May 2022, the Adidas Running & Training UX Design team's composition shifted, a reorg in the fitness apps area took place, leadership changed hands, and the Runtastic acquisition and integration into Adidas was still unfolding. In these uncertain times, the team craved clarity, purpose, and trust. They were saying:
To capture the team's identity, clarify values, and outline how to collaborate, we decided to create a team charter.
I partnered with the UX Design Director to define clear actions to boost team satisfaction based on input from internal engagement surveys. While certain actions were beyond our area of influence, one realistic opportunity stood out: stepping away from daily tasks and bringing the team together to understand our needs, challenges, and how to move forward cohesively toward success. Inspired by the book Liftoff! by Chris Avore and Russ Unger, we set out to create a Team Charter.
We then leaned on a practical framework to keep things from becoming a vague “feel-good” session.
To bring structure and clarity to a potentially abstract exercise, we grounded our process in the team charter framework outlined by Peter Merholz in Org Design for Design Orgs. The framework breaks down what makes a design team function effectively into five foundational elements:
1
Purpose: why the team exists.
2
Principles: the values that guide how we work.
3
People: the composition and roles within the team.
4
Practices: the rituals and methods that shape our day-to-day.
5
Process: how we collaborate to deliver work.
We kicked things off the only way that made sense: by bringing everyone into the room and listening.
We started the project with a 2-day workshop during our monthly UX Design Team Time. This was a previous initiative I led to establish a monthly in-person meet up to work on team building, design ops, and cross-team topics. I co-planned the session with the UX Director, who was our facilitator. We followed Peter Merholz's workshop agenda, which was split into 4 sessions as follows:
Here are some examples of what came out of the activities we did together:
With the raw material in hand, came the challenge of shaping it into something the team could rally behind.
Discussions led to a shared vision of our team and its direction, but we came out of the workshop with a massive wall of sticky notes that made it hard to see a cohesive story. Recognizing the need for efficient progress, the team appointed me as the sole editor and decision-maker to consolidate the collected input. Here's how I shaped the input into a meaningful tool:
1
Information architecture
I grouped the content by recurring themes and cut the clutter, highlighting what really mattered. Then I built a clear hierarchy and labeling system to make everything easier to scan and use.
2
Text refinement
Then came a process of deep wordsmithing. The goal was to ensure meaning without being overly granular, and give it a tone that felt professional but still genuinely us.
3
Framing & visualizing
To make the charter more accessible, I used familiar frameworks like the Double Diamond and created visuals to clearly illustrate key ideas and engage a broader audience.
4
Async feedback loop
With a first draft ready, I looped in key contributors to review major changes and share feedback, keeping things moving while making sure their voices were heard.
The next question became: how to create an artifact that is engaging, accessible, and simple to maintain?
I setup a final workshop for us to sign off the content and brainstorm the delivery format and visual identity. After weighing options, we chose to create an interactive prototype in Figma, our team’s go-to tool. This let us move fast without extra approvals, while staying user-friendly, collaborative, and keeping it easy to maintain. After creating different moodboard alternatives, we agreed to keep Adidas' brand elements, but with an added playful, creative twist that reflected the identity of our team.
Based on the team's planning and individual strengths, I delegated the final visual design to two team members with strong UI skills and set milestones and a timeline with them to ensure a swift completion.
The final product was shared in a team presentation to the entire Adidas Running & Training app organization, and we also sent it out in our team Slack channel and posted it in internal repositories. Check out what the final result looked like:
The creation and use of the team charter tool resulted in:
Stronger team culture
It became a platform for ongoing discussions and prompted us to regularly revisit and update it as the team evolved. This culture of reflection and open dialogue contributed to employee engagement and retention.
Improved hiring & onboarding
By making our design culture, team dynamics, and ways of working more transparent, the charter helped us attract talent, find the right match for us, and speed up integration into the team.
Better visibility & collaboration
Beyond the UX design team, the charter acted as a valuable resource to explain to others how we operated and integrated into the broader company workflow.
Inspiring others through example
Presenting our charter prompted other departments to think about their own teams and their ways of working, and consider a charter as a tool for better alignment.
It’s less about the framework and more about making space for the conversations that drive change.
As is often the case with corporate frameworks, there’s a wealth of theory but far fewer examples of what it actually looks like in practice. While we started with a framework, we needed to adapt it to meet our team where they were. Here are a few things I took away from the experience:
Radical transparency builds trust, even early on
Two new designers had just joined when we started this project, and we worried that going straight to discussing team challenges might overwhelm or demotivate them. But it had the opposite effect: they felt reassured to see the team's openness and leadership taking action. Hearing their past experiences also helped the team learn about the issues and setups of other organizations, and helped people connect faster, making onboarding smoother and building trust from the start.
Facilitation isn’t just about speed, it's about impact
Our goal was not just to create an artifact, but to create real alignment, so while some sessions ran long, and some felt heavy, that space was needed. As facilitator of parts of the process, I learned to balance momentum with room for expression, knowing when to let things simmer and when to refocus. And when we got stuck in details, I stepped in to steer us back to what really mattered.
This project reminded me that building culture is design work: messy, iterative, and human. And like any meaningful product, it only works if people truly feel ownership in the outcome.
