This document provides guidance on creating a project charter by outlining its key elements. It recommends gathering stakeholder input early in the process and conducting a meeting to discuss the project vision, objectives, scope, roles and responsibilities. The main sections of a project charter are described as an executive summary, project definition, project organization, project plan, and considerations around risks, issues, assumptions and constraints. The project definition specifies the vision, goals, objectives and scope. The organization section defines the customers, stakeholders and their roles. The plan outlines the approach, schedule, milestones, dependencies and resources.

1. How to Create a Project Charter
Before jumping into the elements of your project charter template, there are steps you can take that will
help you deliver a better final product. Like any project, the research and due diligence you put in before
the project pays off during the project.
First, creating the elements of a project charter it’s not a solo mission. While it is often tasked to the
project manager, it is smart to get help from the project team members when building the project charter.
Before you put word one to paper, lead a meeting that includes everyone who is a project stakeholder,
clients and other team members.
It’s important to make this an open discussion, where everyone’s feedback is heard and, better yet, put to
paper. This collects ideas and different perspectives for your project charter, but it also serves to help
everyone involved in the project stay informed and avoid any misunderstandings.
This meeting is a wealth of data for you to analyze. Review your notes and when you start a project
charter draft, show it to the team members who attended the meeting. They might have more ideas or
revisions that you can use to update your project charter template.

2. Elements of a Project Charter
As with most project management documents, the elements of a project charter might vary from one
project to another. However, these are the most important elements of a project charter:
Executive Summary
Project Definition
Project Organization
Project Plan
Project Considerations
are the assumptions identified with the project? And then list the constraints.

3. Appendix
1. Executive Summary
An executive summary is where you sum up the various sections that will follow in greater detail in this
document. Be concise, you are only outlining what will come, like a table of contents. This part of the
document will cover the definition, organization and plan, risks and issues and assumptions and
constraints.
2. Project Definition
You must have a clear picture of -what the project is in place to achieve, and here is where you want to
state that purpose and the high-level project description. Our free project charter template for word
includes the following sections for your project definition.
Project Vision
To describe the vision of the project, be concise. The project purpose should really be said in only a
sentence. Boil it down, and don’t forget to make it achievable.

4. Project Goals and Objectives
For the project objectives, you want to list those crucial to the project. Each objective should be a
statement that details what the project is going to achieve. These must be specific, measurable,
achievable, realistic and time-bound, which can be easily remembered as the acronym S.M.A.R.T.
The project objectives can be broken down into sub-objectives. These can include business objectives,
which are business-specific. There are also technology-specific project objectives.
Project Scope
The project scope compiles all the activities, milestones and deliverables of your project. The purpose of
your project scope is to set limits to the work that will be executed. When detailing the scope of the
project you need to take into account what processes, and how they will change, organizational areas
that will be affected, what locations will be impacted, how data might be altered, what applications need
to be installed or altered and which technologies will be deployed and/or decommissioned. Don’t forget to
note what will not be included in your project scope and think about the risks and constraints associated
with it.

5. Project Deliverables
The project deliverables can be collected in a chart, such as one that lists the item in one column,
followed by its components in another and then the description, success criteria, and quality
requirements.
3. Project Organization
In the project organization section, you can describe the roles and responsibilities of all those who’ll
participate in your project, such as customers, stakeholders and team members.
Customers
When organizing the structure of your project, start with the customers. Describe who they are and how
they will use the project deliverables. These customers can be individuals, but they can also be groups.
Remember, the success of the project is dependent on the deliverables matching the requirements and
success criteria of the customers. Make a table to collect this information.

6. Project Stakeholders
Project stakeholders have to be considered in this section, as well. List those people who are in or out of
the project, but have a key interest. These can include company executives, legislative bodies and
regulatory bodies. Create a table with stakeholders in one column and why they are interested in the
project in another. You can use our stakeholder map template to help you with this.
Roles and Responsibilities
Now you want to define the roles in the project. What are the various people needed to take on the
project? They may include a project sponsor, review group, project manager, team member, et al. Again,
you want to collect this information in a table, with columns for role, organization, resource name,
assignment status and assignment date. If your project is larger, however, only list the key roles.
What are the responsibilities of the project? That’s the next item to note. For each role listed, you now
have to define a full set of responsibilities, performance criteria and the skills required. You want to attach
a job description as well.
You next will need to build an organization flow chart that shows the reporting lines between each of the

7. key roles you have already written about.
4. Project Plan
Begin with what your approach will be. What are the project milestones? How will you implement each
phase of the project? Create a table with each phase listed and next to it the approach is outlined briefly.
The overall plan can be scheduled in a Gantt chart. Here you can summarize the project schedule,
outlining the sequence of each phase that you have collected in the table above.
You want to know what your milestones will be over the course of the project life cycle. Project
milestones are major points in a project that marks when a phase is completed. Make a table with the
milestone, the date you want it completed and a description of what it is.
Then you want to list the task dependencies. How will they impact other tasks and will they be impacted
by non-delivery, as in are they task-dependent.
Next, create a resource management plan. In this, you are going to summarize the duration and effort of
each project team member. Begin with their role, followed by the start and end dates and the percentage
of effort.

8. Now comes the financial part. Here you break down the category to the cost and the value. A more
detailed financial plan can be developed in the planning stage of the project.
You next need a quality plan. This makes sure the various processes are being done to lead to the
success of the project. So, therefore, you want to list the process — be it change management, risk
management, issue management, etc. — and then describe it.
5. Project Considerations
Here is where you address the risks in your project. Describe what risk might arise in the project, note the
likelihood (high, medium or low), the impact it will have (again: high, medium or low) and the mitigating
actions you will take if it does happen.
Next address the issues, listed by priority. An issue, unlike a risk, is any event that is currently affecting
the project. Describe it, note the priority and what actions you will take to resolve it.