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MUST HAVE INFORMATION in a Project Charter

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Eduard Hernandez
Community Champion
Product Operations Program Manager Barcelona, Cataluña, Spain
We all have seen several templates of Project Charters and can easily download and edit them. My question is: What are the strictly necessary items that a Project charter must contain? (leaving aside bureaucracy information such as Project number, code, date, sponsor signature, etc.).

This is my suggested list. Your comments and inputs are greatly appreciated:

a. Project purpose (Core reasons for undertaking the project)

b. Project goals and related success criteria (measurable objectives of the project and criteria that must be met in order to consider the project successful)

c. High level description (general description of the project)

d. High level requirements (stakeholder needs to be covered)

e. Requirements & Approvals (specific requirements that need to be covered in order for the project deliverables to be accepted and the project approved + signatures)

f. High level risks (generic risks identified at the beginning of the project)

g. Summary budget

h. Summary milestones Schedule
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Eduard Hernandez
Community Champion
Product Operations Program Manager Barcelona, Cataluña, Spain
Sep 26, 2016 2:41 PM
Replying to Sergio Luis Conte
...
This is what I use from years:
Revision Control
Review/Approval History
1. Purpose 5
2. Approvals 6
3. Scope 7
3.1 What is in the scope? 7
3.2 What is not in the scope? 7
4. Key assumptions and constraints 8
4.1 What are the key assumptions? 8
4.2 What are the key constraints? 8
4.3 What are the identified project dependencies? 8
4.4 What are projects and business activities depending on this project? 9
5. Timelines 10
5.1 Gantt Chart representing all PLM phases 10
5.2 Estimated dates for stage gate reviews and key milestones 10
5.3 Project critical path 10
6. Resource requirements 11
6.1 Level of business involvement required during each phase 11
6.2 Level of Application/IT involvement required during each phase 11
6.3 Internal vs. external resource involvement 11
6.4 Key skills/knowledge required to support the project 12
7. Risk Management 13
7.1 List high impact and high probability risks 13
7.2 Analyze high probability and high impact risks 13
7.3 Describe high-level approach to monitor and/or manage those risks 14
8. Business Case Summary 15
8.1 Key drivers and alternatives 15
8.2 Project success criteria 16
8.3 Outcome relationship model 17
9. Project Governance 18
9.1 Steering committee structure and member names 18
9.2 Approval and escalation process, stage gate review signatories 18
9.3 Roles and Responsibilities (Job-Roles Alignment) 18
9.4 Steering committee meetings approach 18
10. Project Organization Chart 19
11. Stakeholders Management 20
1.1 Identify the stakeholders 20
11.2 Prioritize the stakeholders 20
11.3 Understand key stakeholders 20
12. Architecture and Operations 21
12.1 High level target architecture 21
12.2 High level impact on architecture 21
12.3 Impact on Application/Technical architecture 21
13. Financials 22
Thank you for your answer, Sergio, greatly appreciated it.

I find the proposed charter to be very comprehensive (easily over 20 pages). I am a bit unsure whether all the items in your list are MUST HAVEs or they may qualify in other project management documentation (i.e. Project Scope Statement; Stakeholder management plan; etc.). Just an opinion!
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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina
Well, nothing must be a,must have because each deliverable must fits in your current initiative taking into account all related to your organization way to do things. Project charter is before any plan. For me and for places where I worked on is a contract between the all people that will be involved into the initiative mainly those considering clients. So we are very carefull to clearly express what/how/when/who/how much at the detail level defined into our process.
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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina
Sep 28, 2016 2:34 AM
Replying to Ganesh Srinivasan
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Dear Eduard Thanks for bringing up this topic, Its very helpful :)

Dear Sergio , Full list example is simply great, very very helpful and valaubale inputs.

Currently i'm doing KM project, i could see most of them i have it..

Could you please eloborate on Stakeholder managment ? as it will be helpful for many members like me.

Thank you.
Is the same that you can find inside the pmbok Project stakeholder Management knowledge área. I wrote an article about a practical method to do that and is posted,un my blog here in projectmanagement.com
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Gloria Canon-Cardenas Manager| Project MC Management Consulting SAS Bogota, Cundinamarca, Colombia
Do you have a template that would like to share?
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