Project Charter
A Project Charter is known as a report on the project scope, goals and team members within the project. This is the essential file to make certain that absolutely everyone engaged on the project understands the role as well as the goals and objectives.
This project management document is generally known as project charter or project statement because it is actually the declaration of the project scope. Here you should cover your project purpose, goals, objectives, major milestones with deadlines, main stakeholders and the project team members.
While this document should not necessary be a long and detailed file you should make sure you cover all the components listed above which are also included in the project charter template.
This project management template is initially used to get the project authorized by the organization, it is used as a project introduction to various stakeholders in the company and it is a major benchmark throughout the project planning, execution and management.
Project charters help you communicate the details while keeping the information brief and organized. For example, without having a this project document, the objectives are going to be unclear and frequently perceived inaccurately by your stakeholders who by the way all will have somewhat unique point of view on the job which might ends up with inconsistent list of priorities, role misunderstandings, and perhaps not a successful project.
Project Charter Template (Word Document): Download Project Charter Template (PDF Document): Download
Think of this document as your place to start your project and build the basis for your project by including the brief business case linking the business need for this project for the company, the customer requirements and the stakeholders’ needs.
As a summary, the project charter will be different for different organizations depending on the details required, the industry, the nature of the project and of course the size of the company. However, the document should always include the main components:
- project description
- brief business case
- main goals and objectives
- team members, roles and responsibilities
- major milestones with deadlines
- major deliverables