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Hello and Welcome to the PM Perspective video on Project Charters. If you've been assigned to a project and you're looking for some practical guidance, then you've come to the right place. Today, we're going to answer the following questions: What is a project Charter? Why do I need a project charter? How detailed should a project charter be? What information goes into a charter? What process should you use to draft the charter? And -- stay tuned -- because we're going to show you how you can download a free project charter template at the end of this video. Let's start by explaining what -- exactly -- a Project Charter is... A Project charter is a document of some kind. It could be a word document or something like a PowerPoint presentation ... the format varies as does the name. In your organization you might have something called a project request that serves the same purpose as the charter, or -- if you deal with outside clients -- your Scope of Work, or SOW, may also stand-in for the charter. Whatever the format or regardless of what you call it, the project charter serves three basic purposes. The Project Charter is the document you will use to introduce people to your project The Charter is created in the early days of your project, at a time where you may not have on boarded everyone to the project team, a Project Charter is a great way to get a new team member up to speed once they are assigned to your project. In addition, along the way, if are changes to the team, as new people come into the picture, send them the project Charter, it'll tell them everything they need to know to get started. The second reason for drafting a project Charter is to reach an agreement or get alignment on the most important aspects of your project. Such as the objectives, scope, budget and so on. And finally, once the charter has been created you send the final draft out for signatures and -- in doing so -- obtain approval to proceed with project planning So what about the size and level of detail in the project charter? Given the fact that the Charter is drafted before any real planning has taken place a Charter cannot, and is not meant to be a detailed document. It only needs enough information to describe the project and the product or solution it will create. At larger corporations I've seen 50 page Charters and I have to shake my head. The problems with these charters is simple -- NO ONE WILL READ THEM! And if no one reads them, then you can't use it to achieve the three objectives. A good charter should be 5 pages or less. Yep -- you heard me correctly -- 5 pages or less. And I would try to keep it more on the "less" side -- if you know what I mean. If someone can't read your charter in a few minutes, it can't - and most likely won't -- do its job. Now some of you might be wondering, "if my organization doesn't require a Charter, should I take the time to create one?" I will answer that question in a minute, but first let's take a moment to talk about...