3 Key Domains and 6 Segments to Noodle On For Success
The purpose of this article is to present the components of a charter, how it benefits you by saving time, money, effort, and why it gives you respect amongst those who are helping you, because it guides you to think through most of the important pieces ahead of engaging them. The Charter is covered under INITIATE and RATIONALIZE (Step 1) of a project where you are getting ready to start your project.
The Charter is under the INITIATE and RATIONALIZE (Step 1) where you are doing Project Readiness
Always Start with a Charter
Always begin your project by building a charter.
Think of it as your personal checklist to ensure you’re making the best choice of cost, time, and resources, and help you incorporate anything else that should be considered.
It’s also helpful to have a document to circulate to stakeholders that clarifies expectations and identifies the success criteria for the project.
Initiate and Rationalize covers all W’s and the H
When we talk about the INITIATE and RATIONALIZE step, it’s focus is essentially around the process of building the project charter. You’re getting ready for the project.
This step touches just about all of the items of the project at a high-level; and that is appropriate as the knowledge about most areas is not detailed at this stage but you need to have enough of a high-level understanding of them just the same.
If you want an overview of the INITIATE part of a project, there is a more comprehensive post here containing explanations and examples.
Putting together a Project Charter can evoke some major personal resistance, and you may think “this is not for me”, or “it’s too much paperwork!”
Try to think of Initiate as a checklist where you can dump your assumptions and affirm your perspective for what you expect out of the project.
Practice Doing a Charter, No Matter How Small the Project
Any project you’re doing, whether it’s a multimillion-dollar endeavor at work, or a small life improvement project at home, can benefit from a project charter.
It’s important not to see it as document drudgery you have to create, but a checklist to give you a multi-dimensional perspective.
Getting a 360-degree view of what you need and planning out your timelines and what your stakeholders are looking for will make sure that you know any relevant restrictions or requirements when you walk into the first meeting.
For the vehicle purchase project we’ve been covering in some of the blog articles, it’s the checklist you’ve gone through before you walk in the door of your first dealership, and on top of it, your friends helping you will appreciate how organized and prepared you are.
In addition, producing a charter can be a great way of establishing what your goals and expectations are from the start, preventing a common project management issue called scope creep. Scope creep happens when the goalposts of your project shift as you work on it.
Let’s say you’re buying your car, and you decide that you want to add a trailer into the plan after you’ve already made some choices. All of a sudden there’s a whole extra piece to coordinate and consider – one that wasn’t in your initial budget or timeline.
When you have a document to refer to and give to people helping you out, even if it is just a one-pager, it gives you a concrete way to hold yourself accountable and make sure that you’re being consistent with your original aims.
And if your aims change, which can easily happen when you get into the detail of what you’re doing, you can initiate a change, but it will be for good reason and you’ll have a baseline to do that change from.
Use the MPM model to Guide Your Charter
The MPM model diagram contains a lot of information – far too much for one post.
Instead, we’re going to review the project charter components at a high level through the perspective of the three main domains in which project information is contained: LEAD, OVERSEE, PLAN and identify the project pieces from each that are applicable.
Then the detailed project pieces (such as Roles and Budget) within each domain segment such as (People and Financials) will be explored in their own articles later on where the additional detail will provide a more solid understanding of what each does.
For now, we’ll go through each of the three domains, identify the project pieces in the diagram that are applicable and give a quick description to help you understand why each is included.
We’ll also address the insights and value each of these parts can give you before you invest the time, money, and resources in the wonderful idea you have dreamed up, called a project.
Domain: LEAD
Segments: Motive and People
LEAD covers Motive and People
If LEAD as a section were mapped over to an org structure, it would be analogous to your HR and strategy departments.
This section is all about why you’re doing what you’re doing and who’s involved. How will you manage the people involved, and communicate with everyone consistently?
How are you going to handle change management, especially when there’s a big shift involved, with the potential to affect many staff?
Knowing why your project is important is crucial too – if you can’t communicate urgency or a describe a beneficial outcome, nobody will want to fund your initiative or be involved.
Beyond that, if you’re not specific about why you’re doing the project, anyone else you want involved may feel you’re too scattered and you’ll risk losing their interest.
Including these pieces in your project charter makes your case compelling and ensures that you look at the people aspect of it, not just the numbers and facts.
Domain: OVERSEE
Segments: Outcomes and Financials
OVERSEE covers Things and Money
Speaking of numbers and facts, OVERSEE comes into play as a way of considering variables and costs in your project.
What deliverables do you need to produce, such as documentation, reports, or working technology? How are you measuring the quality of those deliverables, which is to say measuring how well they meet expectations? And what is the set of outcomes expected, referred to as scope?
Think of the outcomes as the objectives of your project, the things you can measure to determine if your project achieved them or not.
You’ll need to describe those objectives in your charter, so that you can establish the outcomes you’re working towards and help your stakeholders get excited about the positive effect that this project will have on their lives.
This is also where financials come in—usually a major consideration in any initiative. What’s your budget? Do you have contingency plans if something costs more than you think it will? How will you evaluate project costs?
Thinking through these outcomes and financials will increase the likelihood that your project will achieve the outcomes everyone involved expects it to achieve, and you don’t run out of money partway through, when you’re trying to get everything done on-budget and on-time.
Domain: PLAN
Segments: Map and Timing
Plan covers Map and Timing
The final domain on the MPM model, the PLAN, looks at the waypoints along the route to finishing your project, how you’re traveling along the path, and the time requirements needed to reach each point.
What is your methodology? Have you thought about a consistent approach to each repeatable set of actions or processes so you’re not improvising each time? What about the high-level overall approach from when the project starts to when all the objectives or outcomes are complete?
How are you going to get started? What processes are repeatable. How are you going to finish?
How many weeks do you think it will take to review that crucial step or set of steps or process?
When do you want to start the project? What about finishing it? Is someone or some group; your “customer” expecting it by a particular date?
In the charter, the map or route you plan to follow and the timing will be fairly high-level, but it’s surprising how just the exercise of thinking through it helps you consider something critical to getting started, that you otherwise may have not thought about..
It gets you to think about how your moving pieces fit together in a consolidated whole and will help you get a big-picture idea that you can share if stakeholders have questions or concerns.
Summary
A Charter is essential to help you start your project off on the right foot. Doing a charter can save you time, money, effort, even before you get started, and gives you respect amongst those who are helping you, that you have thought through most of the pieces ahead of time
Use the MPM model visual, with its components organized around the parts of leading the purpose and people, overseeing the outcomes and costs, and thinking through your approach and timing, to help you structure your charter and make sure you have at least thought through most aspects before you get started.
Action Steps / Apply This Knowledge
- Go through the parts of the model and the segments in the MPM model and fill out one or two sentences for each of the pieces for your current project and see if any new options, ideas or concerns surface.
- If you need to speak with your stakeholders about some of the things that have come up, send them a quick email with what you understand things to be, just as a confirmation, to help clarify expectations. It’s amazing what that does to increase engagement.
- Use the following GPT (e.g. chatGPT) prompt for more details: “I’m a manager launching a project whose main goal is to X, and the main technology we are using is Y, and we need to get done by Z. What are some things I should consider in my charter before I get started on this project to mitigate potential issues that may exist and increase the probability that I’ll successfully meet stakeholder expectations.”
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