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Monday, April 11, 2011

Project Charter

A project charter is a document used to authorize a project including naming a project manager responsible to the project and to what extent his/her power is. Even though the document is not fully a responsibility for a project manager, he/she might help the creation of the document.

To create the document, a project statement of work (SOW) is mandatory. The SOW includes an initial description of the expected outcome (product/result/service) by running the project. In general, SOW document's content refers to business needs to which a project is proposed, it can be from internal (performing organization's business needs) or external (via procurement).

Please note that the SOW will cover a product scope, not project scope. A product scope is a general characteristics of the outcome expected to be delivered by running the project whereas project scope is about amount of work required to successfully deliver a project's outcome.
The project charter may contain assumptions and constraints which must be validated throughout the project life cycle since assumptions are considered true naturally without any verification; these assumptions represent risk(s). Usually, assumptions recorded in the document are like the availability of the labor and/or skills set required for the project is already in place. In the other hand, constraint recorded in the document might be a limited cost and magic number/schedule (a predetermined management-specified-date to which a project's outcome is expected to be launched/delivered)

Referring to a book by Dr. Paul Sanghera, PMP: "PMP in Depth" page 69-70, a Project Charter contains: 
  1. The project justification
  2. A high-level project description
  3. A high-level project requirements
  4. Project objectives and success criteria
  5. High-level risks
  6. Milestone schedule
  7. A budget summary
  8. Project approval and acceptance requirements
  9. An assigned project manager and specified responsibility and authority level for that project manager
  10. Project sponsor
"Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out." -- Stephen R. Covey



 

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