Core Tool

Project Charter

The Project Charter is a document that describes the entrepreneurial challenge of the project's sponsor and the basic setup of the project execution. Learn more about why we use Project Charters and download a sample on this page.

1. Overview

A Project Charter is always the starting point of a Business Design project, usually signed by the sponsor and the innovation manager who will be in charge of leading the project team. Typically, a Project Charter (either as Word or Powerpoint file or in our Project Workspace) gives answers to the following questions:

  • Motivation: What is your motivation to start this project? (e.g. market pressure, trends, business challenge, new technological capabilities)

  • Objectives: What (entrepreneurial) objectives do you want to achieve and how can we measure them? (e.g. new revenue of X, Y new customers in segment Z, cost savings of X)

  • Problem statement: What internal / customers' problem(s) do you aim to address?

  • Draft solution (optional): What potential solution do you have in mind to mitigate the problem(s)? 

  • Assumptions (optional): What assumptions may impede the success of the solutions?

  • Schedule: When does the project start and what are important milestones (= workshops)?

  • Required resources: What else do we need to become a high-performance team and achieve the objectives?

  • Stakeholders: Who would be involved in the first / next iteration of the project and how much time budget do we get over the next 10 weeks?

  • Signature of sponsor and innovation manager

The Project Charter usually goes through a couple of iterations to get it concrete and focused enough so that the scope of the project can be handled in 10-weeks cycles. The coach is usually involved in these loops.

2. Example

Have a look at a simple example for a Project Charter in our Project Workspace:
https://ws.orangehills.de/business-design (SSL protected)
Password: #business_design

Project Workspace
Project Charter Sample (PPT) (60.99 KB)
Project Charter Sample (PDF) (77.76 KB)

3. Usage Scenarios

  • Describing a product / service / business idea in portfolio management

  • Preparing a Business Design project with the sponsor

  • Presenting the entrepreneurial challenge and project setup at Kick-off workshop

  • Alining different expectations on a project

  • Benchmarking the outcome of a Business Design project with the sponsor's objectives at the Decide workshop