The Standards of a Project Charter

In my opinion and personal experience the project charter do not varies by industry. Why? Because the project charter should be a document with few, very few pages. It must contain the basic answers for 5 questions: Why? What? How? When? Who? How much it cost? plus the project success factors and criterias. The key point hear is do not forget it is related to project, not to the product to be created, while the product drives all related to project indeed. With that said, PM is a critical role for creating project charter.

Hi Marcus,

I also think that a charter document should be short and that somewhere the 6-7 questions of Sergio and more must be answered, albeit it could be outside the charter e.g. in a business case document or a statement of work in a signed contract or a program roadmap.

The main purpose of a charter is to give a project manager authority to implement a defined project (as I said, definition could be done elsewhere). The authority is coming from the organization that implements the project and is represented by one of their agents (= people formally allowed to act on behalf of the organization), often called project sponsor. The charter is therefor a governance document, showing the point in time when authority was granted to the project manager. Could be a 5 liner. Authority could be described in detail elsewhere (in a company policy, role description or similar), which is easier to handle if it changes over time.

A charter is not changed, as the act of granting authority cannot be changed. It could be revoked and with that the project be canceled. The charter documents the initial decision by the sponsor to start a project, like a birth certificate. If a project manager changes, the new name will fill the role referred to in the charter. Same for the sponsor.

An external customer is not the sponsor, as they have different targets, loyalty and power than agents of the implementing organization. The external customer relationship is based on a contract, and there is a owner on both sides.

Sometimes a charter gets mixed up with other documents (often with content copied) and this makes it longer and requires the need to involve subject matter experts in the charter development (like the project manager). It may create confusion, not clarity.

Sometimes PMs do get assigned to author the charter draft, such as when there is an idea generated for some type of change from lower levels in an org chart. This is quite advantageous as a PM because since they are your words, you have significant influence on the end decision. The charter then serves as a change proposal and (hopefully) authorization.

Input I am frequently asked for as a PM, is what I will need for a successful plan. This might be specific people on the proposed team, buy-in from external organizations that need to support, or ground rules necessary to constrain the scope. That is particularly important where you as the PM already have some idea of where the obstacles will be in the project, as you are essentially getting pre-authorization for support from people outside your direct area of influence. If someone is known as being resistant to providing resources, I can point to the charter to say that both our directors already agreed that they will support this effort.

I agree with the 'short' Project Charter. It should clearly identify the project purpose and major constraints (time, cost, quality) and establish project priority and authority and to the extent possible name the significant stakeholders. The Charter is the marching order. It should not get into detail as to how the project is to be delivered - that is the job of the Project Plan. The Sponsor owns the Project Charter (the why, what, when, where) - the PM owns the Project Plan (the how). In some cases the significant stakeholders (those with direct impact) may sign-off on the Charter.

I believe the Sponsor can change the Charter without necessarily triggering a 'new' project especially with regards to the constraints (time, cost and quality). The PM can change the Plan as long as it does not affect the Charter.

A list of main Project Charter components would be:
High-level Project description and justification, related success criteria, High-level Requirements and Risks, list of main stakeholders, assumptions and constraints... but it varies depending on the type of industry and organization expectations.