Innovation Elegance

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Project Charter

Robert Snyder

A project charter is pretty common, but rigor varies widely. Sustainable value of a project charter also varies widely. The value proposition and vigilance of your innovation investment depend on a rigorous, sustainable project charter.

As time passes, as other projects complete, and as priorities on your Roadmap settle into view, you are ready to start a new project. You must put to paper the early expectations of every new project. Success factors for a project charter:

  1. Complete as much Current State documentation as you can

  2. Avoid boiling the ocean; keep size and scope of the project modest

  3. Structure and populate the document so that it can evolve as the project team learns more and makes new decisions

Consider every item below to build a rigorous Project Charter.

  • Executive Summary

  • Problem Statement(s) or Point(s) of Pain

  • History / Context

  • Root Cause(s)

  • Scope Description or Project Objective

  • Aspirations / Elevator Pitch

  • Relevant Lessons Learned / Pre-mortem

  • Customer Experience Hierarchy / Use Case Inventory

  • Out-of-Scope Specifications

  • Trailing Metrics

  • Target Metrics

  • Cost of Delay

  • Current State Process

  • Future State Process

  • Business Logic (If statements)

  • Dependencies / Competition of Investments

  • Sponsor(s)

  • Customers / Impacted Human Actors

  • Impacted System Actors

  • Core Team

  • Extended Team

  • Staffing Needs

  • Assumptions

  • Training Approach

  • BRIQ Log (Barriers, Risks, Issues, Questions)

This list of information feels like a lot. It is. This list contains the numerous questions your ensemble must answer as you begin an innovation. Postponing these questions does not make them disappear. Postponing simply promotes tribal knowledge, allows diverging answers to incubate in the minds of your stakeholders, and creates blind spots and vulnerability to negative surprises.

If you are considering holding a project kickoff meeting, be thoughtful about the relationship between that meeting and the Five Verbs for the project charter. Don’t have the meeting upstage the project charter. Save yourself the Powerpoint slides and treat any kickoff meeting as either 1) a Review and Revise session or 2) an Approval session for the charter itself.

Upstream Assets: Roadmap, Change Log, Use Case Inventory

Downstream Assets: Future State Script, Project Plan