Project charter (project management)
A project charter is a fundamental document in project management that outlines the key requirements and goals of a project. Typically created at the outset, it serves as a high-level guide for project managers and teams, helping to determine the project's feasibility and scope before detailed planning begins. The charter includes essential information such as the project's objectives, intended outcomes, major milestones, and a description of how the project aligns with the organization’s goals. It also identifies key stakeholders, risks, and benefits associated with the project, providing a framework for understanding expectations and responsibilities.
Project charters are not exhaustive; they do not contain granular details like specific deadlines or individual tasks. Instead, they aim to prevent issues such as "scope creep," which can occur when the project's requirements unintentionally expand. While a charter can vary in length and detail, effective charters are typically concise and focused, allowing teams to reference them throughout the project's lifecycle. Overall, the project charter is a critical tool for ensuring clarity and alignment among team members and stakeholders as projects progress from initiation to completion.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Project charter (project management)
A project charter is a document that outlines the requirements and goals of a project. Project managers often use project charter to help plan large projects. Project charters, which are also called business cases, include a number of different sections that project managers and their teams complete at the outset of a project. These documents usually indicate the roles necessary to complete the project, the scope of the work of the project, and the intended outcomes of the project. The project charter helps plan the project in the very beginning stages of the process and does not include detailed information about the steps needed for completion. It is meant to be a higher-level document that gives the team or organization a guide to starting the project, and it is sometimes used to decide whether a project should be undertaken in the first place. Project charters help guide project managers and teams throughout the lifecycle of a project.
Background
Project charters are tools most often used by project managers. Project managers help organize and complete projects, which are temporary operations performed by companies or organizations and have specific goals. People have undertaken project management for all of history, but the field became a recognized discipline in the mid-twentieth century. Modern project managers work in many different industries to help guide projects and keep them on time and on budget. Because the point of project management is to help the project succeed, project managers use different tools to plan and execute projects. One of the tools project managers use is the project charter, which is one of the first planning documents that project managers draft when planning a project. Project managers use the project charter and other documents to guide the project throughout all the steps in the project process: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and closure.
Overview
Project managers craft project charters at the outset of a project. Often project charters help people decide whether a project is feasible, so people create the charters before the project has started. The project charter might even be used to try to convince stakeholders to move forward with a particular plan. Since projects charters are usually created before projects begin, they do not include granular, or very detailed, information such as specific deadlines and specific tasks for each member of the team.
Another reason that project managers use project charters is to understand and define the scope of a project. A phenomenon some people call scope creep can happen during projects when the original scope of the project expands slightly in different ways to extend the duration of the project and to increase the workload of the individuals involved in the project. Project managers use the project charter to define the project’s scope so that the team understands what they should do and so that the team will be less likely to expand the scope of the project while they are working on it.
Project managers usually create a single project charter for a project; however, for longer, multiphase projects, managers may decide to create one project charter for each phase. Furthermore, project charters can be only a few pages long or they can be up to fifty pages long. Most effective project charters are shorter so they can efficiently list the information necessary without attempting to go into too much detail. A project charter is ideally short and may seem simple; however, this document takes a great deal of information and time to complete.
Project charters can vary slightly, but most have the same general types of information, inluding titles, which help team members recognize the project and understand the most important aspects of the project. Effective project charter titles are specific and help team members recognize and understand the project being referenced by the title. A charter also includes a brief description of a project, and this description will often include information about how the project originated and how the project will affect the group or organization.
A project charter should also include information about the project’s objective and scope. The objective of a project includes the goals and explains what the team in charge of the project will accomplish. The scope should be clear but concise, so that team members understand the expectations of the project. Developing a project charter also includes developing a list of milestones and goals for the project. Although these goals and milestones will not be extremely specific or granular, they will give team members an idea of what needs to be accomplished for the project to be considered successful.
Project charters should also list other important information. For example, it should list the main stakeholders involved in the project. Identifying the stakeholders helps a team understand what the expectations are and who will be guiding and overseeing the project. The project charter should also identify risks and benefits of the project. Identifying the risks and benefits before the project begins, or is even fully planned, will help those involved in planning and executing the plan to understand what is at stake.
Although a project charter does help plan and prepare for a project, it is not the same thing as the project plan. Project managers generally create project charters very early in the process of the project. It is often the first document drafted during the process. The project plan is a more detailed document that includes due dates, specifics about deliverables, and more. Project managers draft the project plan after the project charter. Then, the project manager and the rest of the team involved in the project execute the project, referring back to the project charter as needed to remind themselves of the project’s scope and the important milestones and goals.
Bibliography
Brown, A. S. “The Charter: Selling Your Project.” Project Management Institute, Inc., 2005, www.pmi.org/learning/library/charter-selling-project-7473. Accessed 28 May 2019.
Eby, Kate. “Free Project Charter Templates.” SmartSheet, 11 Oct. 2024, www.smartsheet.com/blog/project-charter-templates-and-guidelines-every-business-need. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024.
Good, Lauren. "What Is a Project Charter? Complete Guide and Examples." Project-Management.com, 20 Nov. 2023, project-management.com/what-is-a-project-charter/. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024.
Malsam, William. “How to Write a Project Charter: Examples and Template Included.” ProjectManager, 24 Sept. 2024, www.projectmanager.com/blog/project-charter. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024.
"Project Management.” Project Management Institute, www.pmi.org/about/learn-about-pmi/what-is-project-management. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024.
Wong, Ling. “Everything You Need to Know About a Project Charter.” WorkZone, 6 July 2017, www.workzone.com/blog/project-charter/. Accessed 28 May 2019.