The purpose of a project charter
Within Lean Six Sigma, the Project Charter is a document which provides the formal agreement between the business and appropriate stakeholders and the Project Manager.
The purpose of a project charter is to document the purpose and direction of a project, define the roles and responsibilities of team members, and set expectations for project deliverables, including the business case justification for doing the project in the first instance.
It’s an essential tool for successful project management as it helps organize projects, keep them on track and make sure everyone involved is on the same page from start to finish. When written succinctly and adopted by all stakeholders, a well-crafted project charter can save time and money while allowing project managers to assess quickly how resources are best utilised given the tasks at hand. A Project charter enables accountability by clarifying each team member’s contributions and setting realistic objectives that can be tracked throughout development. With it, you can confidently align yourself with your goals towards delivering an effective result!
Key elements to include in your project charter
Crafting an effective project charter is essential to project success. It defines the project scope and objectives and sets the stage for how a project should run. Crucial project charter elements are project scope and deliverables, team roles and responsibilities, project timeline, approval processes, project tracking methods, communication plan, and assumptions.
To create a successful project charter, you must ensure clarity on all of these elements by having agreement from stakeholders. As you build out your project charter, consider engaging experts to ensure each element is considered to have appropriate documentation that encompasses the breadth of your project needs. Doing so will help ensure success across any project’s life cycle!
Steps to build a project charter
Crafting a comprehensive project charter is the crucial first step for any successful endeavour, but how exactly do you go about it?
A Project Charter should include the following elements:
A typical project charter will contain
Business Case – how does it impact the strategic business objectives
Problem Statement – specific and measurable
Scope – What is in and out of scope!
Benefits – a brief description of the anticipated benefits
Milestones – core milestones and deliverables
Risk – A short list of any risks to the project
Project Plan – High-level key steps, timeline, tollgates
Stakeholders – details the list of key stakeholders
Once you know why you are doing the project and what the exact problem is, you need to define the scope of your project and align on the project objectives. Led by the project manager, this will provide a vision of how each stakeholder’s role and responsibilities are necessary to complete tasks throughout the project lifecycle.
Your objectives or benefits should follow suit, honing in on specifics that must be achieved for the project to succeed. The expectations on these objectives should also be clarified to obtain sign-off from necessary stakeholders on evaluating them.
A risk analysis is key in crafting an effective charter; evaluate possible mitigation strategies to prepare for unforeseeable scenarios or issues that may arise during execution activities.
Finally, showing what will be done and when it is done through a high-level project charter is key.
By following these steps, how to write a project charter can become a seamless process resulting in a well-thought-out plan of action.
How is the Project Charter used in Six Sigma?
A Project Charter is a crucial document for success and is critical within the Lean Six Sigma project approach.
A Project Charter is essential for success and is critical within the Lean Six Sigma project approach. It clearly explains the project’s parameters, scope, project objectives, and deliverables while setting out roles and responsibilities. It also helps to ensure the stakeholders’ expectations are well defined, thus providing accountability throughout the project’s life cycle.
At the end of the define stage, when all the relevant elements and project background information has been gathered, the project charter is presented to the key stakeholder and Project Champion for sign-off. This sign-off gives the green light from the business to proceed with the project. Without this green light and project charter sign-off, no project should proceed.
Project Charter Template
Many project template variations range between word, excel, power templates or some via project management software, but the core elements remain the same.
As part of our Lean Six Sigma Training, we provide candidates with a Project Charter example that can be tailored based on the project charter templates used within their existing business.
So if you want to create a project charter or build reviewing a project management charter, you can download our project charter template to get some guidance and tailor it for your business.
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