How to write a Project Charter
When commencing a project its important for the project team to establish a mandate for the project that they are instigating – by articulating the information around the project they can communicate to key stakeholders that they have clear objectives, a mandate from senior management and have thought through issues and constraints.
A Project Charter provides an ideal vessel for capturing and storing this information whilst acting as a medium for communicating to stakeholders.
What is a Project Charter
A project charter provides a start point for the project – demonstrating to senior managers and key stakeholders the nature of the project, its goals and objectives. It should be distributed to applicable senior stakeholders and should be approved (or written by) the Project sponsor.
A Project charter helps establish the framework for the project methodology and acts a point to capture key information and controls. Whilst the project charter is a one off document that is started at the outset, and precedes other documentation, it may be updated at various stages within the project to take account for new information.
What should go in a Project Charter?
Whilst there is no hard and fast rule – the following should be considered
- Problem statement – What is the problem that the project will fix.
- Goals – What will the project acheive
- Project Scope – What are the boundaries that the project will operate within
- High Level Business Case
- Risk Analysis
- Constraints and assumptions
- Key Stakeholders
- Project Organization
- High level Project plan
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