Project Charter Template: Why this document is so crucial to the success of your project?

The Project Charter is a crucial document determining the project’s ultimate success. It contains the most essential information about the entire project and is often included in the project plan. The article will also present a Project Charter template, allowing you to create a complete and adequate document tailored to the project’s needs.

What exactly is a Project Charter?

The Project Charter describes the concept of the entire project and its boundary parameters, bringing clarity to the project. It provides a basis for communication between the project team and various project stakeholders. The Project Charter summarizes a series of discussions to refine the project. These discussions include the project’s business case, objectives, scope, or the so-called KPIs of project success. These are fundamental aspects of any project and should be carefully worked out. Undoubtedly, the project team will develop a better project plan when they understand what business problem the project is supposed to solve and what goals it should achieve. Just as important and often neglected are project success KPIs. A completely different team will approach the project “improve the logistics process” when the KPI is “reduce costs by 5%” and completely different from the KPI “Reduce costs by 20%.” When defining the project’s scope, it is also essential to write down what is not in the project’s scope. In practice, this is very helpful.

Project charter - what should it contain?

A project charter is a project initiation document, the content of which varies in many organizations. The content of the project charter should be adapted to the type and scale of the projects the organization is implementing. However, in practice, the project charter includes the following information:

Project roles – that is, who is the project manager, sponsor, or the composition of the steering committee
Category/classification of the project
Estimated budget
Start and end date of the project
Financial indicators such as NPV, IRR, or payback period
Project objective – the project objective should be very precisely described
Business justification of the project—The so-called Business Case is created for some projects already at this stage.
Influence of the project on other projects – related to different projects.
Scope of the project
Milestones
KPIs for project evaluation – a crucial yet often overlooked element in many Project Charters. In reality, including KPIs significantly enhances the quality of planning and the project team’s work.
Issues outside the scope of the project – this is an essential provision that clarifies the project’s scope.

Benefits of completing the Project Charter

The main benefit of completing the Project Charter is to define the project’s basic assumptions and boundary conditions before the planning stage begins. It is problematic in project management practice that many organizations still treat the Project Charter as an administrative document. Such an approach significantly reduces its value because due care is insufficient to prepare it well. Those who accept the Project Charter often do not read it at all. This is entirely contrary to its primary purpose. If every project stakeholder is involved in its creation, several things can be anticipated and agreed upon before the project plan is developed. Indeed, the omission of these agreements at this stage will affect the quality of the project plan. At the project implementation stage, a “weak” Project Charter will result in more significant project risks. Project management assumes a project has initiation, planning, and implementation phases. Therefore, the Project Charter undeniably affects the efficiency and effectiveness of implementing each phase.

What is a Project Charter and how to prepare it? [EXAMPLE]

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Project Charter Template

A good project management program should include a project charter. The illustration shows the project charter template available in FlexiProject project and portfolio management software.

The system allows each organization to build “as if from blocks” the kind of project charter that the organization needs. In addition, an organization can make a different project charter for IT projects, another for marketing projects, and another for investment projects. The number of card templates is not limited. As shown in the illustration below, the user builds the project card content they require using the “blocks” on the right side of the screen. Such a project card can be approved using a predefined path or printed to PDF and signed on paper. In addition, building a Project Card template is a straightforward activity.

The crucial role of a high-quality project charter in successful project planning

In conclusion, the project charter is an essential document that allows you to launch the project in an informed and thoughtful way. It contains the most critical information about the overall project’s shape and is the basis for starting the project planning phase. There is a high correlation between the high quality of the project charter and the high quality of the project plan based on it.