Sometimes merely giving verbal instructions can lead to more confusion than clarity. Think of orating🗣️ an assignment project to your subordinate instead of giving accurate details in a written format. With verbal instructions, there are greater chances of miscommunication or overlooking details. But writing everything down is tedious as well as time-consuming. This is where templates save the day!
A project charter template is a concept of formulating the process of project development. It assists the program initiators and think tanks in giving them proven direction for successful launching. This is an efficient method of defining the duties and goals of the departments with minimum effort on the channels, thereby eliminating the chance of misinformation.
Project Management Institute (PMI) conducted a study of over 5402 companies. According to that, about 70% of projects deliver adverse outcomes because of unsuitable management or, more precisely, the lack of a charter. 59% of projects could have earned success with adequate communication, while 29% needed more accountability, and 37% required to have formally defined goals.
Thus, a work begun without properly documented guidelines📄 has a higher probability of failing with impacts on multiple grounds. Project charter has a critical role, from designing the roadmap to onboarding deliveries and getting profitable results. Let’s find out how.
How is Project Charter Helpful for Business Organizations?
Whether it is a product development company or a service provider, they regularly frame new ideas to enhance business growth. It is evident that the project leads are responsible for understanding the feasibility and potential of these innovative concepts.
Numerous factors are involved in a project’s initiation, such as objectives, strategy, resources, budget💵 allocation, etc. A properly channelized plan is a guideline toward successful completion, giving a formal understanding of the expected outcome at each level.
The project charter is a successful medium for the companies to describe the job in specific segments while letting the stakeholders or participants understand the viewpoint. Once you make a blueprint, it invites the respective managers to study the possible flaws and make changes. Such successive procedures ultimately reduce the risk of project failure.
Companies🏭 in software development, automobiles, FMCG, or any small-scale sector, seek project charter templates customized by relevant organizations for industrial purposes, which can help meet the goals of the project plan.
How is Project Charter Different from SoW and Project Plan?
Project charter, SoW or Statement of work, and project plan are terms connected to each other but possess considerable differences in their purpose and execution.
Here is a chart outlining the difference between them.
| Parameters | Project Charter | Statement of Work | Project Plan |
| Who is Responsible | Project Lead | Project Contractor | Project Manager |
| What is the Timeline | During the planning stage | After the client’s approval of the project | After the project charter |
| Primary Goal | Formally documents the project with the completion process | Talks about resources and solutions for a desirable outcome | Execution of duties with implementation strategies |
| Main Specs | Objective, scope, risks, stakeholders, finance | Setting accountability, estimates, methods | Duration, resource allocation, teams |
Thus, you can understand that project charters fulfill the purpose of documenting the project details and offer instructions to achieve the objective by following a methodology. On the other hand, SoW works as a formal agreement between the client and the contractor that includes the technicalities of the project. In contrast, the project plan serves as an operational direction for the workforce🧑🏭.
Also, check out the best strategic planning templates for your next business move!
How to Create a Project Charter Template?
A project charter carries strong relevance for the stakeholders. It is therefore created under the concerned personnel and department heads to give detailed information about the project and its usefulness.
For creating a charter, you must follow a sequential format that considers all the necessary prospects of the project discussed by the designated personnel. Here is a brief about the basic structure of a project charter.
- Mention the project’s main objective with details regarding its effectiveness and special provisions in the category. It helps in successfully communicating the idea to the team members.
- Depending upon the scope, market trend, and scale of the project, you can show the necessity of specific staff to work on it.
- Discuss the requirement and resources needed for generating the best output.
- What could be the potential risks in the ongoing process of completion?
- Give a brief about the concerned parties that are directly or indirectly involved from initiation to launching.
- It is essential to give a cost🫰 estimate for the project’s completion. Give a brief bifurcation about the financial necessities at respective levels.
- Is there a suitable time to begin the project, and what is the average duration for its completion?
This charter aims to convey the necessary information about the project idea. The companies usually use a project charter template and change management plan to avoid neglecting crucial aspects of project management. Let’s find out its benefits.
The Benefit of Project Charter Templates for Successful Project Management
Project charter templates are made after thorough research under the guidance of intellectuals. It supports the project heads in preparing and developing a charter document. The intent is to eliminate excessive effort in working the right charter and offering a helpful format.
- It contains information about the primary goals, finances, resources, and feasibility.
- It is an economical solution to understand if the project is worth spending time⏳ and money.
- The companies can reschedule the time of specific departments as per the requirements.
- It helps to explain the objective and concept involved in the project conveniently, and team members get the detailed blueprint to work in synchronization.
Check out the project charter templates offered by trusted firms.
Miro
Miro is an ISO-certified company that offers more than 1000 templates for every stream of job and business growth. These templates possess compatibility with other tools as well. They have worked in-depth to include touchpoints essential for consistent growth in the charter.
The template is in a cellular form, where the top three are for writing the project’s Purpose, Scope, and Success Criteria. You can key in the names of the Team members, Stakeholders, and Users or beneficiaries in the next layer.
Furthermore, Resources, Constraints, and Risk factors are covered briefly. You can even mention specific phases as critical milestones in the Timeline scale given at the end.
Miro provides a single-page📃 template to showcase the crucial points in specific cells. You can choose reference terms to include here that sufficiently define the parameter.
PowerSlides
PowerSlides has developed 7000+ professional templates with over 30000 users, and brands like Amazon, Samsung, and Microsoft are associated with them. You can change the color or add/ edit diagrams, maps, images, etc., in the templates and select from 2500+ vector icons from the library.
The project charter template has four prominent slides with commendable graphics and tabular panels to deliver an analytical view. Engineers, project managers, or professors🧑🏫 can also utilize this in PowerPoint presentations.
It begins with an overview of the project name, objective, and timeline. You can include here your desired milestones of progression. A table format is provided in the next slide to mention the budget required with specifics and cost. You can write the names of staff in the following table.
For business analysis, PowerSlides allows the user to mention the benefits from the perspective of finance, operations, market, customer, and staff. There is an option to write problem statements and cost analyses and dividing into multiple tasks to analyze different aspects.
Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a trusted brand with a customer base in many Fortune 100 companies. They won the Top 50 Best Software Awards 2023 under the category of Project Management Products.
They have designed five significant types of project charter templates along with a Simple format for standard usage. It covers about nine fields in tabloid form to effectively explain the project-related details, including the metrics📈, deliverables, schedule, resources, assumptions, and more.
The Six Sigma template is similar to the standard design but has prefilled Six Sigma belt-level assignees. It ensures economically viable market growth and improved deliverables with waste control.
The Agile template has columns next to assessment fundamental terms for executable planning. It is most suitable for project managers and scrum masters. The construction template is customizable to select the terms suitable for defining in the project charter based on construction work.
The One-page friendly template is print-friendly, as it includes the necessary details of sponsors, clients, and the project on a single page. It is convenient to communicate the charter info in a quick overview.
Smartsheet’s business case template is a precise document to gather approval from stakeholders.
GoLeanSixSigma.com
GoLeanSixSigma.com has worked with various industries with multiple companies to offer online training & certification course and project management resources. More than 450000 learners have been part of these courses with Fedex, Tesla, and other 6100+ clients.
The primary elements of their project charter📝 are Problem Statement, Business Case, Goal, Timeline, Scope, and Teams. The template gets the parameters on a single page to instantly provide a relevant project idea.
GoLeanSixSigma.com’s timeline section is divided into columns of definition, measure, analysis, improve, and control. It divides the space for team members into their titles and the amount of time spent.
ProjectManagement.com
ProjectManagement.com is a dedicated online institute built to provide solutions to project managers. They offer articles, webinars💻, templates, blog posts, and expert advice to boost growth and productivity.
The project charter has options to write the project details in specific columns followed by business-related information. The Project Charter Definition Document has been designed to assist the managers with refreshed ideas.
ProjectManagement.com’s document has 25 essential elements, and the significant headings are scope abstract, sponsors, success criteria, and organizational process. You can also enter brief information about the development phase, prototype testing, user acceptance, and live sessions.
Streamline your project experience further with these Project Management Software.
Bit.ai
Bit.ai offers a document collaborator platform, which is being used Worldwide by firms like Canon and Accenture. The project charter template works in a centralized working model in a statement format, beginning with a project explanation.
You can briefly describe the scope, success criteria, or deliverables in bullet points. There is also space for 💲 finance, milestones, and assumptions, followed by risks, team details, and approvals.
Bit.ai offers real-time access to the template; you can interlink multiple projects or engage with the stakeholders for their approvals or consultations. It also has options to integrate social media, web links, PDFs, Figma, etc., to enhance your experience for efficient business management.
Project Charter Template
Project Charter Template is a platform developed by the team members of Casual.pm. It is a toolkit that guides the project heads in creating exclusive charter content. They can also take assistance from written guides, videos📲, and samples, which are available on the website.
Free-to-download charter template formats are available for particular project requirements such as website redesign, technology investigation, social media, marketing campaigns, etc.
The charter template Project Charter Template promotes has enough space to discuss the project’s background regarding the solution offered. You can separately mention the goals and scope to make it worthwhile. Briefly describe the stakeholders, milestones, budget, constraints, assumptions, and risk factors in separate columns.
Template.net
Templste.net is a storehouse of the world’s🌐 most extensive online library for templates and tools. You can choose a card design, documentation, form, presentation, or template as per your requirements. They offer more than ten formats of simple project charter templates to download for reference.
Six Sigma, team, IT, software, process improvement, construction, and business are some of the dedicated charter template designs provided here. One of their simple templates begins with a section to enter project details like name, sponsor, author, date, committee name, date of presentation, etc.
With Templste.net, you can write brief statements under the description, purpose, and strategic alignment section. A table form is for customer groups, stakeholders, budget, scope, success criteria, dependencies, milestones, resources, and risk issues.
Mypm
Mypm is an expert project management and proposal services provider company. They have years of experience working with organizations to develop government and commercial proposals. Their online store has listed about 86 editable templates that serve the need of multi-level organizational growth and development.
A free-to-download project charter template📜 is provided for professional purposes. It is in a document form with a project title and index on the initial pages, while the main content starts with an executive summary, purpose, objectives, and other information.
Specific sections are given for brief descriptions of requirements, scope, deliverables, risks, assumptions, and constraints. With Mypm, you can add a quick review of the schedule, budget, human resources, procurements, and stakeholders in a table. It ends with an authorization form for the project sponsor.
Template Archive
Template Archive is an online portal with an average of 40 templates in various categories. Whether it is a classroom seating chart in the education category, a personal budget spreadsheet to handle finances, or contractor agreements for legal issues⚖️, it has everything in one place.
They offer many project charter template samples, which are referenced by renowned companies and institutes. These templates are focused on capturing all the necessary information about the project beginning with a table view of identifications revealing the project name, sponsor, manager, and resources.
Template Archive asks for reasons, objectives, scope, success factors, and more in brief statements. Other tabloid sections include project deliverables having units for framework, logic, research, tools, etc.; milestones to describe multiple levels of progressions; key issues and risks.
Final Words: Applying Project Charter Template
A project charter plays an integral part in successfully completing a business project. It gives a clear, concise view of the objective with justifying reasons for the expected outcomes.
Implementing a pre-designed template instead of self-creating a project charter saves time and money for the organization. Many project managers are not aware availability of such templates. Few believe they can handle themselves, which results in slow and restricted growth📉.
Selecting a charter template can be confusing, but you should analyze the project type, scale of work, requirements, and other parameters to get the most out of this document.
Next, check out Business Process Improvement (BPI): What it is and how it works.
