Project Charter Template
Stay within scope, focus on deliverables, and get your entire team on the same page using a Project Charter Template.
Trusted by 65M+ users and leading companies
About the Project Charter Template
Before diving into a project, it's important to make sure you have the necessary documentation that will help you succeed. One key document that you need is a project charter.
Read on to learn more about what a project charter is, when you should use one, and how you can create one using our Project Charter Template.
What is a project charter in project management?
A project charter is a unified source of truth for the details of a project. A project manager or project leader relies on the project charter to explain the core objectives, scope, and responsibilities of a project and its team, as well as some other key details. No matter how wide the project’s scope, the project manager can always refer back to the charter if anything is ever uncertain.
From the moment your project kicks off, a charter can help align every stakeholder around a shared understanding of the project’s objectives, strategies, and deliverables.
Ideally, the project sponsor, who is accountable for the project’s successful delivery, should write the project charter document. In reality, this task often falls to the project manager to draft before it is signed off by senior stakeholders or the project board.
When should you use a project charter?
When you’ve already got a budget, a project plan, a project schedule, and a statement of purpose, why do you need a project charter?
A project charter serves as a single source of truth that supersedes all others — you could call it the founding scripture of your project. When conflicts arise between the budget and timeline or between members of the team, the project leader can use the charter to arbitrate.
The more complex a project gets, and the more stakeholders and moving parts it acquires, the harder it becomes for the project manager to keep everyone on task without a project charter.
Charters are also crucial when you need to sell your project to key stakeholders — especially to decision-makers who may lack the technical knowledge of your project team. The charter is an elevator pitch that makes it easy for gatekeepers to understand the project details.
How to create a project charter
Do you want the easiest way to build a project charter that works the first time? Work from a template. Start by adding the Project Charter Template to your Miro board. Then, follow these steps:
Invite your project team members. The more people can contribute their input to the charter, the more smoothly you can work together on the project itself. Invite everyone to collaborate on your Miro workspace.
Brainstorm answers to the key categories. Below these steps, you’ll find a rundown of all the key sections in the template.
Fill in the results. Once you and your collaborators have settled on what information should go in each category, fill them in on the template.
Use the charter to get buy-in. Shop the finished template around to each stakeholder and get their opinion. As you go, make any changes necessary.
For a charter to be effective, it’s important for the project leader to include as many details as possible. At a minimum, you should make sure to address a few essential elements. The template includes 10 total sections.
Purpose is the ultimate goal of the project, the reason you’re launching it at all. Examples can include filling a niche, increasing customer loyalty, or boosting revenues.
Scope defines what is and isn’t part of the project. Define your scope clearly so your project doesn’t succumb to scope creep, continually bloating with new features and shipping far behind schedule.
Success criteria is a SMART goal (specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound) that can tell you whether the project has succeeded. A project with a criterion of “delighting all our customers forever” is bound to fail. Instead, try something like “obtain the highest market share in our industry.”
Team lists the people who will work directly on the project.
Stakeholders are people who aren’t on the project team, but who have a specific reason to care about how it turns out.
Users are the people the project is intended to benefit (in a way that pays dividends to your company). Unlike “team” and “stakeholders,” users will be segments of the population instead of specific people.
Resources are the organizational assets you can devote to the project, including money, time, people, equipment, and more.
Constraints are known factors that may get in the way of the project succeeding.
Risks are events which may or may not occur, but would threaten the project’s success if they did happen.
Timeline is a rough sketch of how long the project will take to complete, including action items that will define each phase and projected dates for key milestones.
Don’t go overboard on any of these points. The finished project charter shouldn’t be longer than a few pages. All the key information it holds needs to be visible at a glance.
What is the main purpose of a project charter?
A charter is the ultimate source of truth for any questions that arise during execution. Whenever there’s conflict or ambiguity between objectives, people, or teams, the project manager or project sponsor can refer to the charter to clear it up.
How do you build a project charter?
Start by getting your team together in a collaborative workspace like Miro. Adding sticky notes to the template is a simple way to build consensus on key points about the project. Each of the template’s ten sections corresponds to a vital part of a charter: purpose, scope, success criteria, team, stakeholders, users, resources, constraints, risks, and timeline.
What should a project charter include?
At the bare minimum, a charter should list the project’s objectives, scope, deliverables, high-level budget, and the responsibilities of each team member. There are several other elements that the project sponsor may wish to consider. For example, risk identification and mitigation plans, the project timeline, a list of expected resource requirements, a list of key project stakeholders, and a project communication plan.
Get started with this template right now.
Idea Funnel Backlog
Works best for:
Design, Brainstorming, Agile Workflows
An Idea Funnel Backlog enables you to visualize your backlog and restrict the number of backlogged items at the top. In doing sos, you can prioritize items on your list without having to engage in unnecessary meetings or create too much operational overhead. To use the Idea Funnel Backlog, break up the funnel into different phases or treat it like a roadmap. Use the Idea Funnel Backlog as a hybrid model that combines your roadmap and backlog into one easily digestible format.
SMART Goals Template
Works best for:
Prioritization, Strategic Planning, Project Management
Setting goals can be encouraging, but can also be overwhelming. It can be hard to conceptualize every step you need to take to achieve a goal, which makes it easy to set goals that are too broad or too much of a stretch. SMART is a framework that allows you to establish goals in a way that sets you up for success. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. If you keep these attributes in mind whenever you set goals, then you’ll ensure your objectives are clear and reachable. Your team can use the SMART model anytime you want to set goals. You can also use SMART whenever you want to reevaluate and refine those goals.
Eisenhower Matrix Template
Works best for:
Leadership, Strategic Planning, Prioritization
Have an overwhelming list of to-dos? Prioritize them based on two key factors: urgency and importance. It worked for American president Dwight D. Eisenhower, and it can work for you—this decision-making framework will help you know where to start and how to plan your day. With our template, you can easily build an Eisenhower Matrix with a quadrant of key areas (Do, Schedule, Delegate, and Don’t Do) and revisit it throughout the day as your priorities change.
Design Research Template
Works best for:
UX Design, Design Thinking, Desk Research
A design research map is a grid framework showing the relationship between two key intersections in research methodologies: mindset and approach. Design research maps encourage your team or clients to develop new business strategies using generative design thinking. Originally designed by academic Liz Sanders, the framework is meant to resolve confusion or overlap between research and design methods. Whether your team is in problem-solving or problem space definition mode, using a research design template can help you consider the collective value of many unrelated practices.
iPhone App Template
Works best for:
UX Design, Desk Research, Wireframes
Incredible percentages of smartphone users worldwide have chosen iPhones (including some of your existing and potential customers), and those users simply love their apps. But designing and creating an iPhone app from scratch can be one seriously daunting, effort-intensive task. Not here — this template makes it easy. You’ll be able to customize designs, create interactive protocols, share with your collaborators, iterate as a team, and ultimately develop an iPhone app your customers will love.
What? So What? Now What? Template
Works best for:
Agile Workflows, Retrospectives, Brainstorming
The What? So What? Now What? Framework empowers you to uncover gaps in your understanding and learn from others’ perspectives. You can use the What? So What? Now What? Template to guide yourself or a group through a reflection exercise. Begin by thinking of a specific event or situation. During each phase, ask guiding questions to help participants reflect on their thoughts and experience. Working with your team, you can then utilize the template to record your ideas and to guide the experience.