BUS605: Strategic Project Management

Developing the project charter is one of the most important parts of project initiation. By including all key stakeholders in the process of creating it, you will help ensure agreement on what constitutes project success, relevant constraints (e.g., time and budget), and the definition of scope.

The exact form of a project charter will vary from one organization to another. At some companies, the project charter is a spreadsheet file; in others, a document file. You'll find many templates for project charters available on the web. According to Managing Projects Large and Small: The Fundamental Skills for Delivering on Budget and on Time, a typical project charter contains some or all of the following:

• Name of project's sponsor
• Relationship between the project's goals and higher organizational goals
• Benefits of the project to the organization
• Expected time frame of the work
• Concise description of project deliverables (objectives)
• Budget, allocations, and resources available to the project team
• Project manager's authority
• Sponsor's signature

Above all else, a project charter should be clear and specific about the project's goals - that is, about the definition of success. The goals should be measurable, so there is no confusion about whether or not the project is a success:

Ambiguity on the goals can lead to misunderstandings, disappointment, and expensive rework. Consider this example of a broad-brush objective: "Develop a Web site that's capable of providing fast, accurate, cost-effective product information and fulfillment to our customers". That is how a sponsor might describe the project's objective in the charter. But what exactly does it mean? What is "fast"? How should accuracy be defined? Is one error in 1,000 transactions acceptable, or would one error in 10,000 meet the sponsor's expectations? To what degree must the site be cost effective? Each of those questions should be answered in consultation with the sponsor and key stakeholders.

But while you want to be specific about the project goals, take care not to dwell on the precise details regarding how you will achieve those goals:

A thoughtful charter indicates the ends but does not specify the means. The means should be left to the project manager, team leader, and members. Doing otherwise - that is, telling the team what it should do and how to do it - would undermine any benefit derived from having recruited a competent team.