When I teach Project Management the Project Charter (sometimes referred to as “Project Definition”) is one of my “points of emphasis”. I state that if you only do one of the things I teach, then the Project Charter is it. All of your planning and execution will be based on the elements contained in there.
The Project Charter is important enough that I will be dedicating the upcoming blog posts to examine the contents in detail and include examples. Here are the sections:
- Business Objectives
- Project Objectives
- Scope
- Timeline
- Stakeholders
- Risks and Assumptions
- Issues
- Constraints
- Dependencies
- Sign off
On the TV Series “CSI” analyst Gil Grissom once said “Sometimes you have to slow down to go faster”. This applies to the Project Charter. Many involved with a project want to move forward quickly and don’t want to spend the time on this key deliverable. This is a huge mistake. Having a well defined and signed off Charter will make all of the subsequent phases of the project move faster and more smoothly.
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