A project charter is a formal short document that describes the project in its whole. The project charter provides a snapshot about the objectives, scope, goals, stakeholders and a bird’s eye view of how it will be carried out. Project charter is very important and has to be built with utmost importance as it will be used in the end-to-end project life cycle.
The holistic creation of a charter helps the stakeholders not only see the business value of the project but can also refer the charter to understand how well the project is aligned with the organizational strategies.
The main building blocks required to create a project charter are business case and project statement of work. The business case helps to understand the worthiness of the project and throws light on various attributes of the project, not limited to market demands, customers request, technology stack etc. The project statement of work elaborates the scope of work, clarifies deliverables, costs, and timeline.
The business case needs to be approved before starting the project charter and the project can’t be called as project until the project charter is approved.
With a well-defined and approved project charter, the project gets inherited with the right directions to follow, a clear scope with a proper orientation to results and a project manager with essential authority.