The Blueprint for Project Success: A Project Charter

In any corporate engagement, having a clearly defined Project Charter is invaluable. This card helps provide focus and direction. He is the team’s blueprint for success!

The Project Charter has 5 main objectives:

1. Provide an overview of the project, including high-level background.
2. Summarize the team’s approach to executing this project.
3. Help in the selection of participants.
4. Identify team members, clarify roles and responsibilities.
5. List specific deliverables and milestones.

To achieve these goals, your typical Chart consists of 8 areas:

• objectives – Definitively define the central objectives of the project that the team must achieve. These goals must be ELEGANT (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) when possible.
• On reach – Indicate what is in scope.
• out of scope – Equally important, indicate what is outside the scope of the project’s work.
• key activities – Summarize the main steps the team will need to take.
• Deliverables – Outline the tangible work products that the team will deliver to achieve its objectives.
• Sponsor – Specify the executive sponsor member who will be responsible for solving major problems and providing guidance when necessary. Escalation procedures must involve the sponsor.
• Means – List the members of the organization who will support the project. Include outside resources, such as hired consultants, if necessary.
• CSF (Critical Success Factors) – Define the elements that must be met to perform the deliverables. These should be quantifiable where possible.

A project charter can be built very well in PowerPoint. It is created by putting PowerPoint tables together in a 4-column format, where the first column includes Goals, In-Scope, and Out-of-Scope; the second column includes key activities; the third, Deliverables; and the fourth includes Sponsor, Resources, and CSF. Remember, to resize the table borders to pixel, hold down the ALT key as you drag the border.

Along with the Charter, there is usually a detailed Gantt chart that breaks down the Key Activities section of the Charter. The Gantt chart adds a time component to each activity and provides a visual representation that illustrates the dependencies between activities and workflows.