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Project Charter
A formal document recognizing the existence of the project
It may be created by the project manager, but is issued by the sponsor in the initiating process
What Is Included in the Project Charter?The project charter includes fundamental information used to authorize and establish the basis for a project. The charter justifies the project in terms of its value to the company.
Project Title and Description This section includes a simple, high-level description of what is the project. For example, the description may be to upgrade all existing TDM-based desk phones to IP telephones; or to implement softphones on all sales personnel laptops.
Project Manager Assigned and Authority Level This section names the project manager and states whether he or she can determine, manage, and approve changes to the budget, schedule, staffing, etc. The charter gives the project manager authority to make use of company resources to complete the project and may be a big help on projects when authority must be used to gain cooperation.
What a project manager is given authority to do is very company-specific. Some companies allow the project manager to select resources; others require the sponsor to be involved. Some companies allow the project manager to come up with a detailed schedule that meets a requested end date. Others are not concerned with a required end date and let the project manager tell them how long the project will take.
Business Case This section of the charter explains what business problem is being solved with the project. It addresses the question of why the project is being undertaken. The project manager needs to know this, as he or she will need to make many day-to-day decisions, keeping the business case in mind.
Resources Preassigned In this section of the project charter, the sponsor identifies how many and what resources will be provided for the project. Some projects come with a limited number of human resources available or with some team members preassigned. Some team members may need office space, computers, or other capital expense items. Some team members may be in a different geographic location, impacting the project it different ways than a wholly localized team.
Stakeholders This is the sponsor’s impression as to who are the stakeholders. Stakeholder analysis comes later in the project management process.
Stakeholder Requirements as Known This section of the project charter identifies the high-level requirements related to both project and product scope. Known stakeholder requirements are the requirements that have been used to justify the project. Further work to clarify and finalize the requirements will come later.
Product Description/Deliverables This section includes the project sponsor’s indication of what specific product deliverables are wanted, and what will be the end result of the project. It is important to have a clear picture of what constitutes the end result of the project. Is it a report on an emerging technology or a network upgrade? Should the report include recommendations to implement the technology, or is it limited to fact gathering? A measure of project success is that all the deliverables are met.
Measurable Project Objectives This section addresses how the project ties into the organization’s strategic goals, and includes the project objectives that support those goals. The objectives need to be measurable and will depend on the defined priority of the project constraints.
Soft metrics are typically difficult to quantify. If you receive a project charter with only soft metrics, consider it a red flag for needing to establish solid metrics prior to beginning the project. Alternatively, by adding hard metrics to a soft metric statement, the metric can become more meaningful. Hard metrics have a unit of measure (e.g., a percentage of change, a specific dollar value, a unit of time).
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