How to Prepare a Project Charter

A proper project charter can determine the success or failure of your project.

A project charter is a crucial project management form which describes the purpose of a project. Project managers use the charter during planning stages by including the project scope, objectives and approvers. Managers must create the Project Charter properly to ensure the success of any project. Skimping on the preparation of this document can make your project vulnerable to numerous pitfalls and unnecessary delays. According to the Project Management Institute, a project charter sets the stage of the success or failure of your project. It is best to use a template to prepare a project charter.

Instructions

1. Meet with the project sponsors to go over the project goals to be placed into the charter. The project sponsor(s) are individuals looking to benefit from the project results. They have an important stake in the project goals. The sponsors will support the project financially and will use the results of the project within the organization. Gathering feedback from sponsors can be done verbally, if time is limited, or in a written format so that participants can share decisions and place them into the charter.

2. Write a project purpose by focusing on the goals, duration and estimated funding required. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has a very specific method for describing the project charter. This illustrates how a project charter can vary in format but a project charter purpose needs to be clear and to the point.

3. Write the project justification, which is why are you doing the project and will be shorter than an executive summary. The project justification explains the benefit of the project by answering how the project will affect the company and dependent stakeholders.

4. Write the goals for the project which are also the scope of the project. The goals written in the charter are elaborated from the initial discussions with the stakeholder.

5. Write the proposed deliverables. What is the company going to deliver at the end of the project? Deliverables should not be in detail but should have enough information to explain what will be provided at the end of the project, example: "A bridge to connect the Gulf of Mexico between Fort Myers to Galveston" or "Workflow to enable web browsers to click on a shopping cart button."

6. Write the proposed roles, responsibilities and authority. This section focuses on the various roles and related responsibilities of project members. List of roles can be project managers, developers, sponsors, analysts, finance or any other role that is needed to complete the project.

7. Explain who needs to approve the project. The individuals who may need to approve the project can be key stakeholders, funding managers or companies or anyone that will benefit from the results of this project.

8. Present a draft document to the project sponsors for review and feedback.

References

• Project charter guide
• NCEP Project Charter
• USDA IT PM Guide Document

Resources

• Project Management Institute
• Project Charter Template