Documents · Glossary
What is a project charter?
A project charter is the short document that authorises a project to exist, names the project manager and the sponsor, and records the objective, scope boundaries, budget and success measures agreed at the start. It is signed before planning begins, and it is what the manager points at when somebody disputes their authority.
A charter is one of the few documents whose value comes almost entirely from being signed rather than from being read. Its job is to end an argument before the argument happens.
Nuwan Madhusanka · Co-founder
5 min read · Published
| Charter | Project plan | Business case | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Authorises the project and the manager | Says how the work will be done | Argues that the money should be spent |
| Written | At the start, before planning | After the charter | Before both |
| Signed by | The sponsor | Usually nobody | The approver of the spend |
| Length | Two to five pages | As long as the work needs | Ten to thirty pages |
| Changes | Rarely, by the sponsor | Constantly | Not after approval |
The authority problem it solves
Projects fail sideways more often than they fail head on. A manager is appointed, work starts, and three weeks in a line manager refuses to release a developer because nobody told them they had to. There is no villain in that story, only an absence of written authority. The charter is the artefact that fixes it: a sponsor with real budget control signs a page saying this project exists, this person runs it, these are the resources committed and these decisions are theirs to make. Without it the project manager negotiates for authority repeatedly, in private, with people who have no reason to agree. That negotiation is invisible on a status report, which is why the cost of skipping the charter usually shows up as unexplained slippage rather than as a stated problem.
What belongs in it and what does not
A charter holds the objective in one paragraph, the measurable outcomes, the scope boundary stated as inclusions and explicit exclusions, the budget envelope, the milestone dates, the named sponsor and manager, the key stakeholders, the high level risks and the decision rights. It does not hold the work breakdown, the schedule, the resourcing plan or the detailed risk analysis, because all of those change and the charter should not. The exclusions section is the one most often left out and the one that earns its space: naming three things the project will not deliver prevents the slow expansion that nobody ever formally requests. Keep the whole thing under five pages, because a charter that needs a contents page will not be read by the executive who has to sign it.
Charter, plan and business case in sequence
The order runs business case, charter, plan. The business case argues that the investment is worth making and is approved by whoever controls the money. The charter converts that approval into a mandate for a named person. The plan then works out how the mandate will be delivered and is owned by the project manager rather than the sponsor. Organisations that skip the middle step usually end up with a plan that nobody senior has agreed to, which reads as a proposal rather than a commitment. Organisations that skip the plan end up defending the charter dates in a steering meeting with no schedule behind them. Neither substitutes for the other, and both are shorter when the sequence is respected.
How charters go wrong
The commonest failure is a charter written by the project manager and signed by nobody, which is an intention rather than an authorisation. The second is success measures that cannot be measured: improved customer experience is not a measure, first response time under four hours is. The third is a sponsor chosen for seniority rather than for stake, so the person signing has no reason to defend the project when it competes for people. The fourth is treating the charter as a living document. If it is reopened every month it stops being the fixed point the rest of the project refers back to, and a change to scope or budget should be a recorded variation with the sponsor's signature rather than a quiet edit.
Building a charter as a document
A charter is a short, structured document with a signature block rather than a long narrative. One signature block party is one signer, so a charter countersigned by the sponsor, the project manager and a finance delegate needs three parties, each with a name, an email and a signing order. Numbered headings suit a charter that will be cited in steering papers. A table works well for the milestone dates and the scope inclusions and exclusions. A charter is usually under three pages, so no cover is added: covers are only used on documents a reader would expect one on, and never under three pages. Ten document theme presets are available, and a plain corporate one suits a charter better than anything decorative, because the document will be printed and filed rather than presented.
Questions people ask
Who writes the charter?
Usually the project manager or a business analyst drafts it, and the sponsor edits and signs it. Drafting by the person who will run the project is sensible because they know what authority they will need. The signature has to come from somebody who controls the budget and the people, otherwise the document authorises nothing.
Do agile projects need a charter?
They benefit from one, though it looks different. The objective, the sponsor, the funding envelope and the decision rights still need to be written down; the schedule and scope detail do not. A one page charter naming the product owner, the funding per quarter and the outcomes being pursued gives an agile team the same protection without pretending the backlog is fixed.
How is a charter different from a kick off deck?
A kick off deck communicates; a charter authorises. The deck is presented once to the team and the stakeholders and then gathers dust, and nothing in it is signed. Many teams build the deck from the charter, which is a good use of both, but a deck alone leaves the manager with no written mandate to point at later.
What if the sponsor will not sign?
That is useful information, and it is better received in week one than in month five. Refusal usually means the funding is not actually committed, the scope is not agreed, or the sponsor does not believe they have the authority. All three are worth surfacing before a team is assembled, and all three are much harder to raise once work has started.
Can a charter be changed?
Yes, but deliberately. Treat a change as a variation: state what changed, why, what it costs in time or money, and get the sponsor to sign the updated version. Keep the superseded copy. A charter that is quietly edited loses the one property that makes it useful, which is that everybody agrees on what was agreed.
Does a small project need one?
If the work crosses teams or lasts more than a few weeks, a one page charter is worth the twenty minutes. If it sits inside one team and one budget, the charter is overhead. The honest trigger is whether the manager will need to ask somebody outside their reporting line for time or money.
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