How to Write a Charter Statement

A clear charter statement allows an understanding of your organization's main purpose.

A charter statement is one of the important elements of a project charter; it can also be known as a project overview statement. It is a signed document that formally defines a project, a team or an organization. A full charter includes information about the scope, the objectives, the constraints and the major activities of the project. The charter statement is a clear, short paragraph which summarizes the scope of the full project charter. It allows people to understand in one or two sentences a team or an organization's main purpose, target customer and mechanisms.

Instructions

1. Define the team's function. Ask yourself and other team members involved: "What does the team do?" Outline the main tasks, duties, projects and activities performed by the project's team. This will help you determine the purpose of your group, and it is the first part of your charter statement. Make sure to start with a complete list of all your services and then summarize in a few words the core activities of your team.

2. Determine the main audience and customers of your project. Ask the question: "For whom does the team and its members perform its main functions?" Define who your primary customer is. Identify the main benefits that you will provide to your customer through your project's main functions. This portion of the exercise will help you understand the dynamics between your customers, your team members and your main tasks.

3. Identify the mechanisms and procedures that will allow your team, and its individual members, to perform its main activities. Include basic service definitions, policies and procedures. Answer the question: "How does the team perform its activities?" to define this last component of your charter statement. Similarly to the first step, summarize all mechanisms into one, short sentence instead of detailing the exact actions performed by your team in relation to its core reason for being.

4. Merge the results from the three previous steps to outline a clear charter statement. It can be a few sentences long, but ideally, you should be able to summarize your whole charter statement in one clear sentence. To help you do so, fill in the blanks of this example: "We, (name of the team), are tasked to (insert functions), to provide our customers (specify whom) with (insert audience benefits), by (insert mechanisms)."

References

• PM Toolbox: How to Write a Project Charter
• University of Wisconsin-Stout: A Guide to Writing Your Team's Charter Statement

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish