Projects are like voyages; they both start with a launch. Ever wonder what happens before we get into the boat and it pushes off from shore? I might assume that someone has planned for this journey, but what if the plan isn’t in the boat with us! Analysts need to explore requirements. We need a clear target for our investigations. What could point us in the right direction and guide our exploration? A project charter.

What Is a Project Charter?

At some point, interested parties convene to discuss a potential project. They usually bring numerous opinions and loads of data, but might hit an impasse when prioritizing what must be done. What should we talk about first? What is most important? Chartering can lend structure to identifying a focus, a true motivation, and support for this project.

Here is what a project charter document contains:

1. Statement of Purpose: Explain why the organization wants to undertake this project and how this project supports organizational objectives. This is the business case.

2. Project Contributors: List who is involved or should be, and why and how they might be involved. You might name individuals or organizations and include customers, sponsors, stakeholders, domain experts, people who’ll use the system, and the proposed project team.

3. Project Context and Scope: Identify what directly affects or is affected by this project and do the same for the proposed system. What in the system’s environment drives its behavior? You might list markets, organizations, people, devices, and other systems. Describe system boundaries and information that will be needed and produced by it. Analysts use this to establish event lists, use cases, and context views.

4. Goals: Goals state specific project targets that achieve the desired project purpose. The targets state something you can measure. For example, a threshold may be specified: “We’ll be using new tax rules software by January 1 of next year.” Proof through observation may satisfy a goal: “Support sales with a functioning product demo of the three key new features.”

5. Expectations: Consider these perspectives when describing expectations about project completion: the customer, the project team, and management.

6. Constraints: Both the project and system have limitations imposed by customer request. A second set may be imposed by the organization. Constraints include reuse, needed technology, safety, security, standards, ergonomics, governing regulations, time, and cost. This information feeds into the architect’s plans and work.

7. Risks: A risk is a potential problem that might keep us from successfully achieving a goal or fulfilling our customer’s needs. Each risk carries a probability that may be designated simply as high, medium, or low. A risk might be failing to meet a constraint, or losing a resource or key contributor. It also might cite broader industry or economic events that could obstruct or stop project progress. The risk list requires contingency plans and affects management decisions about the project.

8. Resources: This category includes what we need to successfully undertake this project. An estimated budget, necessary software and hardware purchases, training and staffing, and partner participation are all useful entries.

9. Acceptance: The person supporting and funding this project signs the document. An agreement with an outside partner may have more than one signature.

Creating Project Charters

The project charter process surveys both opportunities and necessary realities. Just as we might weigh the pros and cons when purchasing a house, we need to evaluate this project’s usefulness, desirability, and viability.

On one well-run project, the project manager, Jane, began with a meeting. She brought in the departments who would have a stake in the completed project: a technical architect, team leads, her boss (the sponsor), and me as requirements facilitator for their project team. We spent the morning developing a statement of purpose, which everyone agreed to. Many of us proceeded to the next step of defining charter items. Jane assigned tasks to gather information, to develop lists, and to develop the charter entries. Over the next three weeks we met for about seventy-five minutes each morning. We discussed anything that seemed inconsistent with the project purpose and where we had problems. We reviewed a draft at the end of each week. By the end of the third week, we had a charter good enough to present to Jane’s boss. Four months later when a significant change was suggested, that charter was crucial for the negotiation.

When something is presented to a sponsor, expect these possible outcomes: a) acceptance of the charter, b) feedback that prompts a revision cycle, or c) a no-go decision. Cancellation at this point may be due to project risks not worth taking or goals that aren’t feasible at this time. Far from disappointment, this might be the best outcome.

Like any process, chartering can go awry. Here’s an example I experienced some years ago. Ted, the president, proposed a project that involved collaboration with a new business partner. He asked department heads for opinions and observations. I identified a risk that we would be dependent on this partner for specific expertise we didn’t have. Another person noted an inherent conflict with the suggested partner. After everyone contributed, Ted announced what we would do, totally ignoring our input. Soon after the project started, the partner dropped their commitment to the project.

Charters That Work

Here’s a quick list of the minimum elements you need for a charter that works:

• involve people who have a stake in the outcome and in shaping the problem statement and solution
• have an idea of how you want to structure meetings and tasks
• conduct sanity checkpoints for assessing the process and document integrity
• expect insight, not precision
• be concise, clear, and to the point, like a project resume

If you have no project charter, create one! Write what you believe is the charter, and pass it around. The feedback may reveal large gaps in expectations, or not. Either way you will have a better fix on where you are and where you can go. Then you’ll be ready to launch!

Recently my partner and I had a garage sale. Well, not a typical garage sale, but an office version. We were moving our office from the first floor of a building, which included a storefront, to a couple of modest rooms upstairs. So, we had extra desks, computers, printers, chairs, bulletin boards, numerous desk accessories and a small kitchen. How should we get rid of all this stuff?

“Hey, let’s have a sale in our storefront. We could entice customers with coffee and doughnuts and colorful balloons”, I announced.

“Okay”, said Robert.

We spent the next several weeks sorting, throwing out, and cleaning. I made an inventory list.  We decided what to keep and what to sell. Robert assigned prices to each item. We reviewed the list. He changed his mind about selling a chair and a table. I reconsidered some books and added them to the sale pile. A friend bought a flipchart. By April 10th we had a pretty good idea of what our sale would look like.

I realized that if the following Saturday was to be our super sale day, we needed to get the word out. I made flyers – clever words and bright colors. I posted them in the window. I posted them in supermarkets. I handed them out to friends, neighbors and my shiatsu guy.  We put a lovely display of our wares in the storefront window.

Saturday came. At 9:30 we opened the doors, tied the balloons up and waited for our customers. We drank our coffee and continued to wait. At 11:30 AM the first person showed up. Over the day a dozen adults and one small child came into the storefront spending a total of $34.

Why didn’t more people come? I admit that I had doubts in the morning when the weatherman predicted a beautiful day. During the day, I tallied all the other obstacles that doomed our sale.

Lesson 1: Never compete with Mother Nature.

Our indoor sale took place on the first really warm, sunny spring day.  Most people will pour outside like ants at a picnic to cheer the end of winter.  Our sales efforts were doomed against this force of nature. Perhaps we should have had some items out front on the street?

A woman from across the street was the first to arrive. We had never met and it turned out that she runs the tailoring shop. She was delighted to see the curtains open and items on display.

“I’m so happy to see a store moving in”, she told us.

 We said, “ We’re moving out."

"Oh?"

"Our office has been in this storefront.  We are moving it upstairs and hoped to sell things we weren’t using anymore.”

“Well, it’s nice to see the storefront being used again.”

We continued to chat while she examined our merchandise.

Lesson 2: Don’t compete with the taxman or the Easter bunny. 

Our neighbor lamented that her tailoring customers were staying away. She said that they were complaining that after paying tax they didn’t have the money to pay what they owed to her. It suddenly occurred to me that picking April 14 was a mistake.  Maybe people weren’t sitting in the sun. Maybe they were at home with a pile of receipts and a calculator and irritated by any thought of spending more money. With poor timing, my office sale was the last they would have had in mind!

Later my friend, Lovinia, confirmed that tax time was bad for retail business. She said that when her father had an art gallery, he noticed that his gallery was always empty around tax time. After a few years of this pattern, he decided the best thing to do was take vacation during tax season. He wouldn’t miss any customers or potential sales.

Someone else observed that the next day was Easter, and proposed that maybe this was a problem. People might be out buying more important things like candy and new Sunday clothes. This was confirmed the following Monday when we talked to a young woman we knew who worked at the mall on weekends. "The mall was packed!", she said. "I’ve never seen it that busy!". 

I made a note to myself that a calendar with holidays on it might be useful.

Lesson 3: Simple words and large letters get more attention.

My new seamstress friend commented that my signs in the window were awfully small. “Put a big sign in the window like SALE TODAY!”, she suggested. “Okay, I can do that!”, I yelled as ran to the back to grab a large piece of yellow posterboard and big black marker. I made the sign she suggested and tacked it up. “People can’t read your signs", she continued." I came across the street because I saw the curtains opened and some things on display in the window. I didn’t realize it was a one-day office sale. I thought maybe those signs were announcing a new thrift shop.”

She pointed at a shelving unit and asked how big it was. I brought out a tape measure. She checked the dimensions and decided it would fit next to her sewing machine. She paid $10 for it and left.

Lesson 4: Group like things together.

Shortly afterwards I noticed a young woman out by our window looking up at the sign. She came in. The young woman slowly walked around and lifted items up to examine them. After about 20 minutes she bought nine $1 items – a collection of desk accessories, books and a box of clear plastic name badge holders.

A little later a man came in with his two-year old daughter. They walk around and found their way back to the $1 shelves. The little girl picked up a cup. Dad looked at a wire in basket. Nothing seemed to grab their fancy. 

All of our browsers drifted to items in the $1 to $20 dollar range. I realized that selling computers and printers, even at bargain prices of $50, $100 or $250, wasn’t really likely to happen at a something that looked like a thrift shop.

Lesson 5: Context is everything.

Of course, I thought, how ridiculous to lump these all together! They would appeal to entirely different people. The equipment ranging from $50 to $250 didn’t look like much of a bargain next to the cheaper objects.

Then I began to contemplate the audience for our sale. Students from the local college might pick up a coffee maker, cups and a book.  People from small businesses might be looking for deals on used office equipment. Do students read the want ads? Does either of them look at grocery store bulletin boards? I don’t know, but based on my results, I’d guess not.  I had missed my audience and overlooked how to reach them.

Lesson 6: Go to your audience, announce your intentions early, and meet their schedule.

I began to feel a bit silly about not having placed an ad in the paper. Several years back, we lived next to a master of the yearly yard sale. Her formula included picking a time when the weather is likely to be nice and advertising in advance. Our neighbor said that bargain hunters always check those listings and always showed up early.

The schedule that Robert and I picked met our needs, but probably didn’t match the bargain hunters’. Our former neighbor always opened earlier than she announced – often around 7 AM – because people apparently like to bargain hunt early on Saturdays to leave the rest of the day open.  Our announced 10 AM opening cut right into a perfectly good Saturday.

I had missed so many obvious and fundamental steps, I had to laugh. My office sale project was now looking to me like the poster child for classic mistakes.

Biggest Classic Mistake: Plan to have enough time to do the planning, or the project might not have a firm foundation.

My partner and I had several holes in our project planning:

1. We didn’t think carefully about timing. We didn’t consider whether tax season or Easter would impact our plans.
2. We were too focused on our objectives and our inventory lists and not enough on “the world” we hoped to bring to our office sale.
3. We missed major tasks. Even though we thought about a sale, we didn’t identify the critical tasks that might have made the sale more successful.
4. We didn’t allow enough time for the project.

Classic Miscommunication: If you tell only part of the story or use language that doesn’t match the message, you’ll only confuse people.

1. Posting colorful and clever flyers or colorful balloons did not make the point as well as clear language about a sale.
2. We didn’t clearly identify our “office sale” as a one-day only event.
3.  Repetitive notices counting down to the sale date might have created recognition. In both consulting and teaching I use repetitive messages to reinforce important ideas or measures.

Classic Requirements Problems: If you rush to quickly to completion you may have to do it over.

1. We missed a basic requirement for a sale – advertising.
2. We didn’t take time to understand who our customer was or what they might want.
3. We didn’t understand that we had two different customers and needed solutions for each. 

Well, we weren’t in a position to do it over – we had a deadline! Someone needed to be in our storefront by the end of April.  But, our sale day wasn’t a waste: I wrote an article, met the seamstress across the street, and the Senior Center and Salvation Army received generous donations.