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A team charter establishes shared goals, ground rules for how team members will work together, and the criteria used to measure success. It provides a formal reference that clarifies purpose, roles, decision rights, communication norms, and how progress will be evaluated, which helps the team stay aligned and accountable.

A project charter, by contrast, centers on the broader project—its objectives, scope, stakeholders, and high-level deliverables—rather than the team’s internal working agreements. A mission statement describes why the organization exists and its overarching purpose, not the day-to-day functioning of a specific team. A team plan tends to outline tasks, timelines, and resources, but it usually doesn’t codify the team’s ground rules and success metrics in the formal way a charter does.

So the document that best fits the idea of codifying common goals, ground rules, and measurement of success for a team is the Team Charter.