Project Charter: Guide with Examples and Template
What is a Project Charter?
A project charter is a formal document delineating the project's purpose, scope, stakeholders, objectives, and comprehensive plan. This document should guide all subsequent decisions and actions.
Essentially, a project charter is like a project's roadmap. It communicates what the project is about, who's involved, and how it will be done. It's the go-to guide for all project decisions, helping keep the project on track and aligned with its original goals.
It helps prevent scope creep and budget overruns by providing a written reference throughout the project. It also emphasizes stakeholder consideration, ensuring the project aligns with expectations and standards.
What is a project charter in project management?
In project management, a project charter is the foundation of a successful project, offering clarity and direction to the team and ensuring everyone is on the same page.
When starting a new project, it’s essential to have a clear plan in place to ensure success. That’s where a project charter comes in.
As a project timeline reference document, the project charter is there to help you navigate issues that arise proactively. In a sense, it’s to the project manager what a blueprint is to an architect.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what a project charter is. We’ll talk about the benefits it brings as well as tips for writing one. We will also share a project charter example with all the essential components.
With Wrike, you can easily create and customize project charters to suit your specific needs, streamlining the planning process and increasing productivity for an improved return on investment. Try Wrike for free today and experience the benefits for yourself.
Project charter vs. project plan
Easy to confuse, the project charter and project plan share similarities but serve different purposes.
The project charter is a high-level strategic overview that seeks to lay out the terms of the project, along with other key details such as relevant stakeholder information. It provides the parameters within which your team must operate in order for the project to be a success.
The project plan is more of a nuts-and-bolts outline that explains how you’ll go about executing the project on a tactical level. In the project plan, there should be a greater emphasis on specific actions, processes, and workflows that will help you complete your work efficiently and to a high standard.
What’s the purpose of a project charter?
The main reason for putting together a project charter is to set the tone and guidelines for an upcoming project.
A project charter is similar to an essay plan.
Before writing an essay, you would normally:
- Research to find data that supports your claims
- Create a skeleton structure for your argument
- Identify and address reader objections so you can answer the questions that might emerge in the reader’s mind
With a project charter, you would go through a similar process, whereby the objections become obstacles you have to navigate, and the data incorporates all relevant details necessary to complete the project.
Without the benefits of a project charter, you’re forced to fumble your way through the project, finding solutions for emerging problems on the fly.
The high-level overview of a project charter puts you on the front foot and equips you to take proactive action, rather than allowing yourself to get blindsided by problems along the way.
The project charter overview
The project charter typically documents the following parts of the project:
- Project objectives and constraints
- Key stakeholders
- Risks identified
- Benefits of the project
- General overview of the budget
Project objectives and constraints
First, outline what your main objectives are for the project and identify potential constraints or obstacles that could prevent you from achieving them.
When considering constraints, think about your available budget, team member capacity, and other factors such as stakeholder requirements.
Timeline
Map out the estimated start and end dates for the project, along with any milestones you should hit along the way. You can then translate this information to a dynamic timeline model in your project management software to track progress in real time.
Key stakeholders
Identify and list every stakeholder with a vested interest in the project and its success. Detail what their role is in relation to the project, what you might need from them, and how you can contact them.
Risks identified
Create a plan for mitigating or avoiding risks that pose a threat to the completion of your project. First, identify what they might be, then figure out what the best course of action would be for each.
Benefits of the project
Consider and describe how the project will positively impact:
- Stakeholders
- Customers
- End users
Be as specific as possible, as it’s important to bear the benefits in mind as you work through the project to prioritize effectively.
General overview of the budget
Write a high-level financial overview in which you break down your budget for the project, factoring in the funds available and any anticipated costs. This can help you avoid going over budget but also provide stakeholders with a summary of the project finances.
How to create a project charter
There are four clear steps to creating your own project charter.
Step 1: Understand key project goals and objectives
Identify the project vision and determine the scope of the project. This step is crucial to creating a project charter as it sets the tone for the rest of the project by establishing what is to be accomplished and what constraints or limitations exist within the project scope.
Step 2: Define project organization
List all of the essential roles for the project, including customers, stakeholders, and the day-to-day project team. The project charter should clearly outline the responsibilities of each team member, as this helps to ensure everyone involved in the project is aware of their respective roles and can work together effectively.
Step 3: Create an implementation plan
Outline major milestones, dependencies, and the timeline for the entire team and stakeholders. The implementation plan is a critical component of the project charter, as it provides a roadmap for how the project will be executed, including key deliverables. This allows the project team to stay on track and ensure that the project schedule is met.
Step 4: List potential problem areas
This isn’t about being a downer — it’s more about being realistic. By identifying potential problem areas in advance, the team can develop contingency plans to mitigate risks and address challenges as they arise, ultimately helping to keep the project on track.
What do I do once I finish writing my project charter?
Once you’ve finished writing your project charter, you should have a clear process in place for making sure your execution goes to plan.
Step 1: Authorize the project
Once the project charter is complete, it should be presented to stakeholders for approval. This step allows the project to move forward and gives the project team the green light to start work. Stakeholder approval is a critical aspect of the change management process.
Step 2: Develop a scope statement
The scope statement should clearly define what the project will accomplish and what it will not. This helps to ensure that the project stays on track and that the project team and stakeholders have a clear understanding of the project’s goals and objectives. Any changes to a scope statement will impact the work breakdown structure.
Take your project charters to the next level
Tips for writing a project management charter
As you work through the above steps, you might also benefit from some of these tips.
Rely on insights from your team
Don’t feel like you need to work out all this information on your own. Pull together some of your project team members to pick their brains about goals, milestones, and potential problem areas. Gathering their insights will help you create a far more accurate project charter.
Keep it short and straightforward
It’s tempting to get lost in the amount of information available. But keep in mind that your project charter is supposed to be a high-level overview of your project and not a breakdown that covers every detail. Each section of your charter should only require a sentence or two. Additionally, charts and bulleted lists will help you present the information in an organized and digestible way.
Create a template
After you realize how helpful a project charter is, you’ll undoubtedly want one for all your team’s projects. Don’t waste time reinventing the wheel. Create a simple template that you can copy and use for all your project charters. Not only will it eliminate some manual effort, but it will also ensure you don’t miss any elements.
Project charter template
As an alternative to crafting your own template, we have prepared a free project charter template that you can use. In this template, you can find all the key elements of a project charter and modify the components according to your scope and needs.
You can download our free project charter template below, available in a variety of formats:
- Wrike’s Project Charter Template in PDF format
- Wrike’s Project Charter Template in Microsoft Word format
- Wrike’s Project Charter Template in Google Docs format (please make a copy)
To help you further with the process, we will now move on to the project charter examples.
Project charter examples
As a first example, imagine that you and your team are putting together a webinar to generate some new leads. Here’s what a simple project charter could look like.
Company XYZ Project Charter
Project Name: “Building a Positive Company Culture” Webinar
Project Description: A one-hour webinar featuring insights from three employee engagement experts
Business Case: Supports our company-wide goals of:
- Increasing sales by 28% this quarter
- Establishing Company XYZ as a thought leader in the employee engagement space
Project Deliverables:
- Landing page for webinar signups
- One-hour webinar
- Webinar recording for continued lead generation
Project Benefits:
- Boosted reputation
- Lead generation
- Resource we can continue to promote
Project Risks:
- Technical difficulties
- This is our first webinar, and the team lacks this expertise
Project Budget:
Not to exceed $3,000
Project Milestones:
- Landing page launched - October 15, 2020
- Slides completed - October 26, 2020
- Live webinar - November 4, 2020
Project Team Members:
- Project Manager - Thai V.
- Designer - Greta K.
- Webinar Participant/Expert - Jason B.
- Webinar Participant/Expert - Safiya M.
- Webinar Participant/Expert - Rachel C.
- Webinar Host - Tom S.
- Social Media Coordinator - Ander B.
- Email Marketing Coordinator - Nancy R.
To visualize your project charter with all the deliverables and risks, you can make use of a Gantt chart as well.
As a second example, imagine that your company is launching a mobile app for time management. What would the project charter look like?
Company ABC Project Charter
Project Name: Launching an Innovative Mobile App for Time Management
Project Description: Developing and launching a mobile app that allows users to manage their time effectively using AI-powered features
Business Case: Supports the following company-wide goals:
- Expanding the product portfolio in the productivity tools market
- Establishing company presence as an innovator in AI-driven time management solutions
Project Deliverables:
- Fully developed mobile app for iOS and Android
- App store listings and promotional content
- User guides and tutorial videos
- Post-launch customer support plan
Project Benefits:
- Increased market share in the industry
- Improved brand reputation as a technology innovator
- Revenue growth from app sales and subscriptions
Project Risks:
- Potential delays in the launch due to technical challenges
- Competition from existing apps in the market
Project Budget: $50,000
Project Milestones:
- App prototype completed - May 1, 2021
- Beta testing initiated - June 15, 2021
- App store listings and promotional content prepared - July 20, 2021
- Official app launch - August 1, 2021
Project Team Members:
- Project Manager - Kim L.
- Lead Developer - Raj P.
- UI/UX Designer - Fiona S.
- QA Tester - Martin H.
- Marketing Coordinator - Lisa T.
- Technical Writer - Aaron M.
- Customer Support Specialist - Diane W.
Create your own project charter with Wrike
Having pre-made templates can be a time-saver when starting a new project, particularly when it comes to standard documents that are essential for every project. Creating a project charter template for your organization eliminates the need to reinvent the wheel whenever a stakeholder or project sponsor presents a new project idea.
Wrike has a diverse selection of templates for different tasks such as creative briefs and sprint planning. Additionally, Wrike empowers users to design their own templates for repeated processes and requirements, such as project charters. By utilizing Wrike’s customizable templates, project managers can quickly draft comprehensive project charters that align with their organization’s objectives and needs.
With Wrike, project planning and execution can be simplified, enhancing efficiency and productivity. Sign up for a free trial to get started today and discover the power of project management with Wrike.