After completing your stakeholder analysis and developing your stakeholder register, you started working on your next project, which will be to develop a project charter. You started to gather information from various stakeholders via interviews and e-mails. The latest e-mail you sent caused quite a response. Several meetings were centered on the project charter, statement of work (SOW), work breakdown structure (WBS), and enterprise environmental factors and organizational process assets that you will use to complete the second and most important deliverable at this stage, the project charter. Jim comes to your desk one afternoon for further discussion.

“Our team meetings on the SOW, project charter, WBS, and environmental factors and organizational process assets have been very productive,” says Jim. “Thanks for getting this project charter moving in the right direction.”

“Anytime,” you say.

“So, based on our last team meeting, do you think we are ready to write a concise SOW and the project charter?” asks Jim.

“I think we have enough information to assess risks, assumptions, define scope inclusions and exclusions, objectives, business need, milestones, high-level budget breakdown, acceptance criteria, and constraints,” you say.

“Have you ever prepared a WBS before?” asks Jim<.>

“I have,” you say. “Prior to working at ACH, I was an associate project manager for an engineering firm on the West Cost.”

“Oh, that’s great!” says Jim, handing you a document, saying, “Here is a simple template that combines all three deliverables: the SOW, the project charter, and the WBS. Do you think you can update the project charter for me with all of the required information?”

“Sure,” you say, looking at the document. “You know, in my previous job, we developed three separate documents for these three deliverables.”

Jim smiles and says, “Oh, believe me I know that, but as you know we’re a small organization and have developed our own ways of managing project records within the overall project management PMBOK®Guide framework. Remember, the PMBOK® Guide framework is a tool kit and we’ve taken from it what works well for us here.”

PMBOK is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

After Jim leaves, you start working on the project charter for the next meeting. You use all of the information you gathered and follow the direction under each section of the Project Charter Template to ensure completeness.