The Project Guru

The most important piece of information at the beginning of any project/program is the "project charter". The information revealed in the project charter will direct how the project will be ran, what will the project do, who is involved, what will the project deliver, and when will it complete.

I would say roughly 88% of projects do not have a project charter hence the high statistic of project failure. It has happened that the horse came before the buggy so never could get major forward moment since the project team would always have to play catchup.

Consider the following components of a Project Charter:

• General Information: Who are the stakeholders and major participants


• Project Charter Purpose: The why


• Project Executive Summary: What the project is about


• Organizational Breakdown and/or Roles and Responsibilities: How each participant plays a role. Some advanced examples are RACIs, RAMs, and Organization Charts


• Communication Plan:


• Project Scope: Define goals, objectives and deliverables


• (part of scope definition) Project Deliverables and/or Work Breakdown: What is being delivered? Can be a list of deliverable milestones, or to an even better approach creating a WBS.


• Change Control Mgmt: Manage changes by defined processes


• Quality Mgmt: How to go about ensuring quality


• Risk Mgmt: Identification, prioritization, and possible mitigating actions


• Status Reporting: Determine schedule of standard and key meetings


• Signatures: Key stakeholders for agreement of the Charter.

Some items can be added or subtracted depending on what is important to the needs of the business and project team. Having a project charter can only lead to success and not the other way around. But it is important that if people agree to the charter that they all take responsibility in following and participating in the project processes defined herein.