​​​​Gabriele Pirotta​

Project Charter

This is an important document that outlines the scope, objectives, and stakeholders involved in the project.

It documents everything the project needs and its expected outcomes.

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The project charter also doubles up as a business case document. In case you need to convince stakeholders of the importance of a project, or outline the goals to your team, you will turn to the project charter.

Whether you are using a project charter templates, there are a few elements you should always include:

• Project title: Start with the title. Make sure it is specific enough to make identification easier. A good template to follow is this - "[Project Type] to [Project Objective] for [Project Client/Product]". For example, "Inbound Marketing Campaign to Increase Marketing Qualified Leads for Apple Corporation".

• Executive summary: Include a high-level summary of the project, its purpose, and its stakeholders.

• Project objectives: Explain the "why" of the purpose in greater detail. Be very specific about the outcomes you seek. It's a good idea to include specific numbers or at least a range. Don't say "increase traffic"; say "increase website traffic by 200% in 6 months".

• Business objectives: Use this section to describe how the project fits into the business' broader strategic goals. For instance, if you're running a campaign to increase traffic to a website, describe how the higher traffic would help the business in achieving its goals.

• Project requirements: Explain the project's requirements in terms of resources - both tangible and intangible - at a high-level.

• Project scope: Use this section to answer the question: "What is the project meant to accomplish?" Focus on both long and short-term goals & objectives, but briefly.

• Key deliverables: Briefly list the key deliverables at different milestones.

• Project schedule: Give a high-level overview of the project's estimated schedule. You don't have to be accurate down to the day, but a broad explanation of key milestones will help.

• Project budget: Give a high-level description of the project's budget. You can break this down by resource requirements if you want to go into more detail.

Besides the above, you can also include a list of project stakeholders, roles, milestones, risks, and the completion/success criteria for the project.

Keep in mind that this list is by no means exhaustive. You can expand or shrink the charter based on your own needs. For most projects, however, including the above will be enough.

Project Plan

There is no fixed "recipe" for making a project plan. You can be as detailed or superficial as you need to be. Unlike the project charter, which is meant for stakeholders on both sides of the table, the project plan is mostly to cue you and your team into the project and its goals.

Think of it as a simplified, distilled form of the project charter, but less formal.

Keep in mind that this is a living document. You can modify it as the project progresses and you learn new things. It doesn't have to be comprehensive; it just needs to tell you and your team what they need to accomplish.

Here are some things you can include in the project plan:

• Project identification: Include details about the project, including its name, description, ID, client, and project manager's name.

• Project dates: Identify the start and estimated end date of the project. You can also include a counter indicating the number of days left until the end date.

• Progress: Mention how much of the project has been completed so far in terms of milestones accomplished.

• Tasks/activities/deliverables: You can include a broad overview of key tasks, activities or deliverables, depending on the level of granularity. In complex projects, for instance, you might want to focus on deliverables, while in smaller projects, you can specify the exact tasks needed to produce said deliverables.

• Task details: Include details about each task’s start and end dates, the team or person responsible for it, and the task status.

• Timeline or Gantt chart: You can also include a timeline or Gantt chart showing dependencies and progress for each task. 

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Gantt Charts

Gantt charts is one of the most prominent charting techniques in project management. Though nearly a century old, Gantt charts still find use across industries in projects of varying complexities.

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As a project manager, you’ll use Gantt charts extensively. Anything that can be broken down into constituent tasks can be represented on a Gantt chart. Not only does this help you visualize deadlines, but it can also help you understand task dependencies.

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While you can create your own charts from scratch in Excel, you’ll save a lot of time by using Gantt chart templates.

For an even easier solution, consider using a project management software with built-in Gantt charts.

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Work Schedule

As a project manager, one of your core responsibilities is managing your team's schedule. What task each employee has to work on, on what days, and for how many hours is essential for running a project smoothly.

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Most managers turn to weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly work schedules to manage their team's activities.

These schedules usually have the following components:

• A title identifying the type of schedule (weekly, bi-weekly, etc.)

• The scheduled date or period

• The name of the employee

• Work assigned to the employee

• Number of hours assigned to each task on each day of the week

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As far as project management documents go, work schedules are fairly straightforward. 

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Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)

The work breakdown structure is one of the more important documents you'll create in the course of managing a project.

The work breakdown structure involves breaking down deliverables into smaller, more manageable chunks.

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Thus, you might break down a bicycle into "wheels, frame, handle", and wheels into "rims, spokes, tires".