Hello, everyone.
My name is Jennifer Drai and I'm a senior PMO consultant at EPMA.
Today, I am going to talk to you about the Eight Project Charter Must-Haves.
A project charter can be as extensive or as brief as you need it to be, but as long as
you cover the eight most critical elements of your project, which I refer to in this
video as a project charter must-have, you'll be way on the other side.
Let's start by looking at the first element, the project name.
This one, for as easy as it may sound, it is quite important as it helps you and everyone
else identify your project as a unique undertaking.
Your second must-have element is your date.
You may have a mandated start date and an end date, or you may have to determine them
yourself.
Just keep in mind that once this is set, there will be an underlying expectation for your
project solution to be delivered by then.
The third element you must include in a charter is your name or the name of whoever the project
manager will be.
This ensures that everyone who will be directly or indirectly involved in the project becomes
aware of who is the person in charge of ensuring the project will get successfully completed.
The fourth and possibly the most important element to state out in the charter is a business
need.
Why?
Because if it weren't for the fact that your project's end deliverable is intended to satisfy
an existing need your company has, then why would it be necessary to dedicate any kind
of work effort, time, or money on making it happen?
Now, after you have identified the business need, you want to make sure to include a brief
list of project objectives.
This helps quantity the value that your project investment will bring about to your company.
It also ensures the stakeholders, especially the project sponsor and the end user, that
the project will deliver exactly what they are expecting.
The sixth element you want to list out and ensure everyone agrees on is your milestones.
Milestones, which can be thought of as your high-level deliverable schedule of your project,
are a set of outputs required to happen at a specific point in time in order to meet
the agreed upon project deadline.
They also represent those checkpoints or facets on your project that allow you not just to
monitor progress, but also to validate work with your sponsor, and involved stakeholders.
Then your proposed budget is your seventh must-have.
This is another main constraint that can greatly impact the shape and fate of your project.
It is usually estimated at first by the sponsor, and it's intended to provide a rough idea
of how much of an investment your company is willing to make in exchange of achieving
the desired objectives.
And last but not least, another critical element of your project charter is your sponsor's
approval or sign-off.
Because the sponsor has the ultimate responsibility for the project, he or she also has the formal
authority to approve the charter.
Approval indicates an understanding of the purpose and content described within, as well
as an agreement that work can be initiated and that necessary resources can get committed
to the project.
Make sure that once your project charter is approved that you distribute it to all key
stakeholders.
And also remember that the project charter is nothing set in stone.
If any of these critical factors were to change at any given time, the existing charter must
be updated to a new version, and approved by the project sponsor as well as communicated
to everyone involved.
Now, let's take a look at how a project charter that contains these eight must-have elements
looks like.
You see?
It's just a one-pager.
Ensuring you produce an effective project charter won't take you more than 15 to 30
minutes.
And in turn, it can make a great difference by preventing your and your team from spending
countless hours re-doing project work or putting out fires that occurred by having made the
wrong assumptions, or by having misunderstood certain expectations during the outset of
your project.
So next time you get asked to manage a project, make sure you quickly document this eight
must-haves on a piece of paper.
These are again: the name or title of your project, your start and end date, your name
or that of the project manager, the business name, the project objectives, the project
milestones, the approved budget, and your sponsor's approval or sign off.
You will be sure to know that everyone will be on the same page as it relates to critical
information that can determine the right course of your project.