Collaboration Contract

Collaboration Contract Skill

Cross-team projects fail at the seams: each team runs on its own invisible rules (working-agreements are per-team; the seam has none), decision rights are assumed differently ("we thought design signed off; they thought we did"), and handoffs bounce because "done" meant different things. The collaboration contract is the seam's rulebook, one page, agreed at kickoff while everyone still likes each other: who decides what (the decision-rights table), how work crosses the boundary (the interface), how the teams talk (channel + cadence), and what done means per handoff — cheap to write on day one, expensive to reverse-engineer during the first fight.

What This Skill Produces

• The decision-rights table — the project's likely decisions × who decides / who's consulted, the ambiguous ones forced now
• The interface spec — how work moves between teams: the handoff format, the request path, the done-definition per handoff type
• The communication layer — the shared channel, the sync cadence (as light as the project allows), the escalation path with names
• The friction protocol — what happens at the first collision: the two-lead conversation before anything ascends

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The project and the teams — what's being built/done, which teams, their prior history (a scarred partnership needs the contract more and trusts it less — the tone adjusts)
• The likely decisions — the calls this project will force (scope, priority conflicts, quality bars, launch timing); the table pre-decides the deciders, and the awkward ones ("who wins when priorities conflict?") are exactly the ones to force now
• The handoff shapes — what actually crosses the seam (designs → build? data → analysis? approvals?); each shape gets its done-definition
• The leads — the two humans who own the seam; the contract is theirs to sign and theirs to enforce

Framework: The Contract Rules

1. Force the ambiguous decisions now: the table lists the project's foreseeable calls with a decider each — and the ones both teams assume they own are the ones the kickoff must settle ("tie-breaks on priority: [name]"). Every ambiguity left standing is a scheduled fight with interest.
2. Interfaces are formats plus done-definitions: each handoff type gets its shape ("designs arrive as [format] with states covered; 'done' = the checklist passes") — because bounced handoffs are almost always definition mismatches, not quality failures. The runbook-writer verify-per-step logic, applied to seams.
3. Cadence as light as survivable: one shared channel, one short sync at the necessary frequency (not the reassuring one — meeting-cost-meter math doubles across two teams), and the asks flowing per async-update-format shapes between syncs. The contract names it all so nobody invents parallel channels in week two.
4. The friction protocol de-escalates by design: first collision → the two leads talk within 48h, before either escalates upward ("no surprising each other's managers" is the clause that saves partnerships) → unresolved after a real attempt → the named tie-breaker. Written while calm, the protocol converts the first fight from a relationship event into a process event.
5. The contract is one page and revisited once: kickoff-signed, then reviewed at the first milestone ("which clause did we violate? fix it or change it" — the working-agreements revisit logic) — a living page, not a treaty. Longer contracts don't get read; unrevisited ones drift into fiction exactly when needed.