Project Charters and Budget Management

Jenna Duxbury Project Manager| Worship Design Studio United States, United States

Hello, PMI community! I have a question about project charters and budget management. I work for a very small company. I’m the only full-time employee, and I report to and work closely with the company CEO. I help supervise the work of three contractors in addition to liaising with 3rd party vendors and additional external contractors. Project Manager has been my official title at the company since 2018, though I also do a significant amount of operations management and project work - for example, on a project, I assign project team members to tasks and help develop the production schedule, and then I’m one of those main team members who actually creates deliverables and completes the project work. The CEO completes some of the project work as well. Despite the overlapping of my roles on the team, I believe (and very much hope PMI agrees!) that my years of experience managing projects will qualify me to take the PMP exam. I’m seeking some guidance for how to translate what I do into PMI terminology. For example:

I take my direction directly from the CEO, and we do not have a process of creating formal project charters. The CEO will assign me to a project, often via email, with general details about the project we are planning to undertake. I don’t really need to seek approval through formal documentation for using company resources because we are both aware from the beginning of roughly the amount of time needed, who will be part of the project team, and the general scope of work to be done.

Another example… because we are such a small company, I have never had an active hand in managing the finances and overall budget for our projects, so I’m wondering how to speak to that while describing my activities on the projects. If I don’t have any experience managing the budget for projects outside of my own hourly work schedule and helping to supervise those of our contractors, will PMI still recognize my qualifications? Any insight from the community on these topics?

Posted: Nov 18, 2024 8:31 PM

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Abolfazl Yousefi Darestani Manager, Quality and Continuous Improvement| Hörmann-TNR Industrial Doors Newmarket, Ontario, Canada

Congratulations on being accepted as a PMP candidate! I hope you successfully complete the process and continue advancing your career.

Posted: Feb 10, 2025 7:55 AM

Ashwin Kumar H M

Community Champion

Consultant| Canarys Automation Ltd Bangalore, Karnataka, India

Thank you for sharing your experience so candidly—what you’ve described absolutely sounds like project management in action, and I believe you're on the right track in preparing for the PMP exam.
PMI understands that project environments vary widely, especially in small companies and startups. While formal documentation like project charters or budget ownership may not always exist in such settings, your role still maps well to PMI’s domains. Here are a few tips to help translate your work into PMI-aligned terminology:

Project Charter: Even if you don’t create a formal charter, you're clearly involved in project initiation and stakeholder engagement. Your email assignment from the CEO and the resulting scope, schedule, and team setup can be described as initiating and defining the project.
Budget Management: While you may not manage financials directly, overseeing contractor hours and ensuring the work aligns with time expectations can be positioned as resource and cost awareness. PMI values the ability to monitor and control costs—even if it's limited to hours and deliverable tracking.
Dual Role as PM and Contributor: This is common in smaller teams. You can highlight how you balance leadership (planning, scheduling, supervising contractors) with execution (delivering work), which reflects PMI’s emphasis on adaptive leadership and collaborative planning.
Experience Qualification: PMI looks for leading and directing project tasks—not necessarily holding a specific title or following textbook processes. You’ve been managing teams, working with stakeholders, handling execution, and delivering value consistently since 2018—all of which support your eligibility for the PMP.
You might consider documenting your projects using PMI’s terminology across the five process groups (Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling, and Closing). This will make your application clearer and stronger.

Wishing you the very best as you move toward certification—your experience definitely counts!

Posted: Apr 13, 2025 10:17 AM

Jenna Duxbury Project Manager| Worship Design Studio United States, United States

Hi Ashwin Kumar H M, I appreciate your thoughtful response. I did complete my application pretty much in the way you suggested by emphasizing my experience across the five process groups, and PMI accepted my application. Translating the terminology has been the most challenging part for me, but I've gotten some great support and encouragement from this community. I'll be taking the PMP exam next month!

Posted: Apr 15, 2025 7:42 AM

Ashwin Kumar H M

Community Champion

Consultant| Canarys Automation Ltd Bangalore, Karnataka, India

From what you have described, I would focus less on whether your organization uses formal PMI terminology and more on the project management activities you actually perform.
For example, the email from your CEO may not be called a Project Charter, but it may still represent the point at which the project is authorized and you are given responsibility to proceed. I would not try to rename it as a formal charter if that is not what your organization uses. Instead, describe accurately how projects are initiated, how objectives and scope are established, and what responsibilities you take on.
I would take a similar approach with budget management. If you do not own the overall project budget, I would not try to present yourself as though you do. Describe the resource-related responsibilities you actually perform, such as planning your own effort, coordinating contractor effort, assigning work, managing schedules, working with vendors, monitoring delivery, and communicating with the CEO.

PMI's current guidance emphasizes experience leading and directing project work rather than requiring a particular job title or organizational structure. It is also important to separate your project management experience from the operational work you perform, since you mentioned that your role includes both.
Your small-company environment may look very different from a large organization with formal charters, PMOs, and dedicated finance teams, but that does not necessarily mean the work is not project management. I would document each project honestly in terms of its objective, your leadership responsibilities, the people you coordinated, the activities you managed, and the outcome delivered, and then compare your accumulated experience against PMI's current eligibility requirements.

Posted: Sep 23, 2026 6:08 AM

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Project Charters and Budget Management

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