Project Charter and Project Management Plan

Project Charter

When you are assigned the role of project manager and given a project it is very important that you get off to a good start in the project process. One of the first things you should do is meet with top management and key stakeholders to develop a project charter. A project charter is generally some form or document that makes the project official and gives the project an outlook on its plans, management, and goals. (Some organizations use small letters of agreement and some use longer contracts).

There are many ways and things to design and implement information into a project charter. However, some of the main fields of a project charter that should be included are:

"-The project's title and date of authorization, the project manager's name and contact information

-A summary schedule that includes the planned start and finish dates; if a summary milestone schedule is available, it should also be included or referenced

-A summary of the project's budget or reference to budgetary documents

-A summary of the planned approach for managing the project, which should describe stakeholder needs and expectations, important assumptions, and constraints, and should refer to related documents, such as a communications management plan

- A brief description of the project objectives which includes the business needs or other justifications for authorizing the project

-A roles and responsibilities matrix

-A sign-off section for signatures of key project stakeholders

-Project success criteria, including project approval requirements and who signs off on the project" (Schwalbe, 1999).

There are more fields that can be included in a project charter but each one can be specific to the project with a few general fields that are needed in all.

One project that it would have been interesting to see the project charter of is the Hoover Dam. At the time, it was the world's largest dam and it was able to be completed two years ahead of its projected finish date. This was mainly due to the Chief Engineer/ Project Manager, Frank Crowe. The planning for the Hoover Dam was mentioned to Congress in 1922 but it was not authorized until 1928 (History.com, 2010). There were several contracts, legal documents, and agreements between the government and six engineering/construction firms for the project. However, even though there was years and years of planning there are no official project charter records.

For this project, Frank Crowe would often have to come up with different ideas like figuring out a fast and efficient way to transport workers and materials with cables through the site or paying teams bonuses for fast efficient work or creating their own hard hats. Frank Crowe could have used the project charter to refer to certain things like the budget for the project or how to avoid certain penalties or regulations beforehand and not dealing with them on the fly. A project charter could have also helped Crowe and stakeholders document certain things and schedule or revise some of the plans they had made for building/ constructing and helped them complete the dam even faster. Here is how some of the fields for the project charter could have been filled in:

Project Title: Boulder Canyon Project(Hoover Dam), Authorization Date: December, 1928,

Start Date: July 7, 1930, Finish Date: 1937

Stakeholders: Congress/ U.S government officials; residents/ officials in the states; Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada.

Project Description: Building a dam to help regulate flooding and irrigation while also generating hydroelectric power to sell for repayment of the project (History.com,2010).

Budget: 48,980,955$ (Owen, J. & Linger, H. (2008)).

Creating project charters could be useful in future projects to reference things from past projects and learn from mistakes and remind themselves of what went good and use that to benefit them.

Project Management plan

After the project charter when you want to get more specific into the project and how you are going to manage it, you should develop a project management plan. "The main inputs for developing a project management plan include the project charter, outputs from other processes, enterprise environment factors, and organizational process assets. The main tool and technique is expert judgments are expert judgment, data gathering, interpersonal and team skills, and meetings, and the output is a project management plan."(Schwalbe,1999)

"A project management plan is a document used to coordinate all project planning documents and help guide a project's execution and control."(Schwalbe, 1999). These plans should be flexible and can change. They should assist you in leading and seeing progress in development of the project.

Crowe did have a lot of ideas that helped him progress fast despite not having these "official documents". "Crowe believed that if there was a more effective way to complete a job that he either knew about it or could develop the technique to overcome it."( Owen, J. & Linger, H. (2008)). He was also able to use project experience that he had from previous projects and was able to create new techniques and processes. He had numerous workers due to the great depression and decided to split them all up in to three groups working continuous 8 hour shifts, offering competitive pay and creating innovate ways to pour and dry the concrete faster. Planning this during the project management plan years before could have possibly reduced the time even more.

If Frank Crowe had used a project management plan he could have mapped out more details and processes instead of dealing with the problems as they came. Although they did figure out how to get the project done faster, it could've benefitted them having it all documented and planned out in the beginning preventing some deaths/ injuries, lost money, resources, or even saved more time. Providing a project management plan also helps stake holders and top management to keep track of things.

Some of the things they could have put in the project management were: The schedule. How they sectioned off and divided the work, with digging tunnels, laying concrete, or transferring materials to the construction site. Laid out some of the risk and potential costs for workers and his innovations.

Although these two documents they help to hold you accountable and keep track of how the project is going and you can go back and refer to it if you are ever confused about how something in the project should be handled. Providing this document should be a great help to a project manager, the team, and stakeholders as it will help organize the project even more.