Developing a project charter

 

Let's talk about how to create a project charter. 

In the last video we discussed how project charters, are a valuable document for 

project managers. 

Project charters are key for securing approval from stakeholders and 

moving forward. 

Project charters can also be formatted in many different ways and 

there are many different templates available online for you to choose from. 

Here, we'll use a template that's similar to one that program 

managers often use at google and to fill in each section will use 

details from your project at Office Green, ready? 

Let's take a look! At the top of your charter, 

you'll want to add in the name of your project. 

Let's add in the name of your project at Office Green, 

it's called: Project Plant Pals.

You also want to add in a brief summary, let's type that in. 

Our plan is to offer high volume customers, small, 

low maintenance plants that can thrive in an office environment.

Next up, let's fill in the section labeled "project goals." 

Remember that goals should be smart. 

Let's add in the goal for 

Project Plant Pals which is to increase revenue by five percent by rolling out 

a new service that provides office plants to top clients by the end of the year.

Great, now let's add in the project deliverable. 

Remember that a deliverable is a tangible outcome from a project. 

As you learned earlier, our deliverables for this project are to send 1000 plants 

to 100 customers and to launch a new website for orders and customer support.

Okay, now let's add in the business case, which captures the reasoning for 

initiating this project. 

Let's type in: "this is a top requested service from our customers and 

it will also improve customer satisfaction and retention."

The business case is supported by the cost benefit analysis and 

we'll add that in now. We'll start with the benefits. 

The benefits or expected gains of the project, include 

improving customer satisfaction and an increase in revenue.

Nice, we've now outlined some of the benefits and costs of this project.

Keep in mind that these are simple examples to teach you the basics of 

filling out a charter. When running a real project, 

you'll perform a more detailed analysis to determine the benefits and costs.

The key takeaway here is that benefits should always outweigh the cost.

Fantastic, let's keep going. Next, we're going to add in the project scope 

as well as what's considered out of scope for this project. 

Remember scope is an agreed upon understanding of what is included or 

excluded from a project. 

An item that is in scope, includes creating a service to deliver 

small plants to last year's top clients. 

An item that is out of scope, and therefore not available to customers, 

includes plant care after they're delivered. 

Amazing. 

Hopefully you can see how stating what's in scope and what's out of scope helps 

everyone working on the project understand where they should focus their efforts.

Great, now let's add in your project team. 

Let's see here. 

The project sponsor is Office Green's director of product. 

So let's add that in.

Who is the project lead? 

Well, that's you.

The project team may include marketing associates, website developers and 

externplant vendors and more, so 

we can add in a few important project team members here.

Who is the project lead? 

Well, that's you.

Awesome. 

Let's move on to additional stakeholders. 

Additional stakeholders may include the vice president of customer success, 

who is accountable for customer feedback and corresponding product requests. 

We can also add in the account manager who will leverage their existing relationships 

with top clients. 

And let's also add in the fulfillment manager, 

who will help acquire the plants needed to launch the service.

We're almost done, let's add in how we'll measure success. Here we will type in that 

we want to see a five percent increase in revenue by the end of the year. 

Let's also type in that we want to hit a customer satisfaction rate of 95 percent, 

three months after launch.

That's it. 

The project charter is filled in and 

now it's ready to be reviewed by your stakeholders. 

Now you're done. 

You've seen how documentation helps form the roots of a project and 

how it contributes to the project's ultimate success. 

Like nurturing a plant, 

you're learning to nurture a project to ensure its the best it can be. 

Up next, we'll talk about the tools that project managers rely on to guide their 

teams and ensure that they complete their tasks.