PROJECT CHARTER ASSIGNMENT
Assignment
In this assignment, start the process of building your own dream home (this is a theme that we will carry on throughout this course) – why a dream home? A dream home is a concept that we can all relate to and it has all of the elements of a project according to the PMBOK®: ‘A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result’.
Assignment Purpose
In this assignment you will create your dream home’s project charter. According to the PMBOK®: A project charter is a document issued by the project initiator or sponsor that formally authorizes the existence of a project and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities.
Assignment Objectives
Your personal learning objectives for this assignment are to:
- Develop an understanding of how a project charter is used within a project environment.
- Demonstrate a practical understanding of the information content needed within a project charter.
- Describe a project using project management terminology, concepts and industry best practices as outlined in the PMBOK®.
“Dream Home Charter” Background
One of the objectives of this assignment is for you demonstrate appropriate information content that would be provided in a project charter. As such, the amount of information provided to you is limited – you are expected to ‘make up’ information where gaps exist in the provided information, and present what information you feel would be appropriate to complete the assignment. (Note: You are not expected to be an expert in house design, and you will not be assessed on the accuracy of the information provided – only on the appropriateness of the information and how the information is presented.)
Dream Home Details
- For this project, you take on the role of the homeowners creating a project charter (as defined in section 4.1.3.1 of the PMBOK®) to define your dream home.
- The bank has approved you for a $300,000 loan to build your dream home on lakefront (or riverfront) property (in the town of your choice).
- The work on the project can be divided up into several main areas:
- 1) Landscaping (excavation, foundation, grading, driveway);
- 2) House Construction (frame, roof, siding);
- 3) Inside Work (floors, ceilings);
- 4) Infrastructure (electrical, plumbing and mechanical);
- 5) Management (management activities); and
- 6) Other (inspections and milestones).
With this minimal, high-level information, you can now begin the journey to your dream home by defining the project charter.
Project Charter Template
For this assignment you will be creating a project charter based on the template introduced in section 4.1.3.1 of the PMBOK®.
Length: This assignment should be approximately 6-9 pages (not including cover page, Table of Contents or bibliography).
Mark Allocation: The following grading template will be used to assess the assignment:
| Section | Maximum Mark |
| FORMAT: (Professional, business-quality document) | 3 |
| GENERIC CONTENTS: (title page, Table of Contents, bibliography) | 3 |
| PRESENTATION / GRAMMAR AND SPELLING: (Articulate, clear, concise, well developed (avoid verbose and excessive prose) | 3 |
| Project Charter Sections | |
| Project Background | 6 |
| Project Purpose (Goal) | 6 |
| Project Objectives | 6 |
| Out-of-Scope Items | 3 |
| High-Level Requirements | 7 |
| High-Level Assumptions | 7 |
| High-Level Constraints | 7 |
| High-Level Risks | 7 |
| High-Level Milestones | 7 |
| Project Stakeholders | 7 |
| Project Acceptance | 7 |
| Summary Budget | 7 |
| Project Manager’s Responsibilities and Authority | 7 |
| Approval Statement and Sign-off | 7 |
| Total | 100 |
Please note: There is a project charter writing guide below that provides detailed and specific instructions as to what information content needs to go into each section. The writing guide and the instructions contained within it are to be considered essential and are part of this assignment.
Project Charter (PMBOK® 4.1.3.1) Writing Guide[1]
This writing guide provides critical background information for the project charter assignment. What follows are some general guidelines and then specific section-by-section guidance on how to approach the assignment.
- Your Objective: Your objective on this project is to demonstrate your knowledge of the project management related tools and techniques covered in the course notes and the PMBOK®. While creative writing can be fun, it should not distract you from demonstrating the PMBOK’s® learning objectives.
- Individual or Team assignment: If you wish, you can team up with one or more other students and work as a group on this and/or any other course assignment. Please let the facilitator know if you have a teaming arrangement in place, and make sure that all group members’ names appear on your assignment.
- Follow the template: When creating your assignment, be sure to attempt each section, as grades have been allocated to each section and grades cannot be awarded for information that is not called for in the template.
- Third-Party Material: While research for this project is encouraged, you need to both cite and reference any third-party material that you use in your assignment. You are free to use any standard citing and reference methodology.
- Identification: Please ensure that your name and the course title are clearly indicated on all assignment submissions. If you are part of a group, then please make sure that the names of all group members are included on the assignment.
What follows is a section-by-section guide as to the type of information that needs to appear in your assignment.
- Title Page: You can have fun with your title page (illustrations and graphics), but at a minimum, the title page must have the following information on it:
- Your name (or the names of all members of your group),
- The course name,
- The project name (have fun and think up a name for your project!)
- The date submitted, and
- The following statement: All material prepared for this assignment was produced by the author(s), and material from a third party (such as the internet) has been cited and referenced.
- Table of Contents: The Table of Contents must be generated using your word processor’s built-in ‘Table of Contents’ generation feature (found within the [Reference] Tab of WORD. If you have not worked with the Table of Contents feature in the past, then this is a good chance to learn some of Microsoft Word’s additional features.
- Project Background: In this section you can provide relevant project related information that would have been previously published and used as an input to the project charter. This information has not been provided for you; instead you can ‘make up’ appropriate background information. Examples of the types of information that you can present in this section include:
- Business need (PMBOK® section 4.1.1.1): Why is this project needed?
- Strategic Plan (PMBOK® section 4.1.1.1): You can include information on how this project aligns with the organization’s strategic plan – in this case, your strategic plan (as it is your dream house).
- Business case (PMBOK® section 4.1.1.2): You can include the desired project outcomes and project justification information that would have originally been published in the project business case.
- Project Purpose (Goal): Assume that the reader is unfamiliar with this project and provide a short (one or two sentences), concise statement as to what the project’s purpose (or goal) is. In this section you will be evaluated on your understanding of the term ‘project purpose’ and on how well you can practically demonstrate the use of that term as it relates to this project.
- Project Objectives: In this section, you should state what your dream house project’s objectives are. You should demonstrate between 3 and 5 objectives for this project. For this section you will be evaluated on your understanding of the term ‘project goal’ and on how well you can practically demonstrate the use of that term.
- Project Exclusions (Out-Of-Scope work) (PMBOK® Section 5.3.3.1): Identify examples of work that would be commonly associated with a project of this nature, but will not be completed as part of the project. In this section, you should list several out-of-scope items to demonstrate your understanding of this concept.
- High-Level Requirements are “conditions that are required to be present in a product, service, or result to satisfy a contract” PMBOK®. There are many types of requirements (PMBOK® Section 5.2 and 5.2.3.1) – in this section you are to provide examples of how the customer would explain what they want for their dream home. Essentially, give examples of how a customer might describe what features, style or elements they would like in their dream home (keep in mind your project scope, and restrict your requirements to only those that are relevant to the project scope).
- High-Level Assumptions (PMBOK® Section 5.3.3.1): Provide 3 to 5 examples of high-level project assumptions that would impact the project planning. For this section you will be evaluated on your ability to demonstrate the appropriate assumptions that would be relevant to the planning process.
- High-Level Constraints (PMBOK® Section 5.3.3.1): Provide examples of 2 to 3 external constraints that would have a direct impact on the project planning. Also provide a very brief description of their impact. (Note: The project’s budget and schedule would be considered internal constraints and cannot be used in this section.)
- High-Level Risks (PMBOK® Sections 11.1, 11.2): ‘Project risks’ really refers to ‘uncertainty’ on the project. Uncertainty can be negative or positive (either threats or opportunities). In this section you provide the following information:
- Risk Tolerance – the project cannot be protected from all risks. The customer must indicate which of the project triple constraint (budget, schedule, and quality) must be prioritized over the others. Indicate for which of the triple constraints you have the least tolerance for variation (this constraint then becomes your highest priority to protect). Indicate why you feel that this constraint needs to be prioritized in its protection from potential risk threats.
- Also give 3 examples of project risks (one should be an opportunity, or ‘positive’ risk). Provide the following information for each risk:
- Description: High-level description of potential risk event and its consequences to the project.
- Risk Strategy
- In the case of threats to the project, what strategy (PMBOK® section 11.5.2.1) should be used, and what action is recommended to achieve this strategy?
- In the case of opportunities for the project, what strategy (PMBOK® section 11.5.2.2) should be used, and what action is recommended to achieve this strategy?
The following table can be used to present your high-level project risks:
| Risk # | Project Risk | Risk Description | Risk Strategy | Strategy Action |
| 1 | ||||
| 2 | ||||
| 3 |
- Project Milestones (PMBOK® section 6.2.3.3): Review the definition of a project milestone and then complete the following milestone table with 4-6 examples of milestones that would be appropriate for a project of this nature.
| Milestone Name | Milestone Description | Milestone Date |
Of most importance to the milestone section is your supporting description of why the milestone candidate should be considered a milestone for this project and what impact the proposed milestone will have on the overall project planning process.
- Project Stakeholders (PMBOK® section 13.1.3.1): Identify four to five project stakeholders who would be appropriate for a project of this nature. Consider the following types of information when describing your stakeholders:
- Identify the stakeholder (for this assignment, identify them by the title or role that they play in the project)
- What elements of the project are they involved in?
- How do they contribute to the project?
- What do they need from the project? (Information? Or otherwise?)
- Who do they report to?
- Who is the voice of the customer (‘voice of the customer’ is defined in the PMBOK® Glossary): Support this selection by providing a brief explanation as to why, and ensure that you demonstrate your understanding of the role that the voice of the customer plays on a project.
Key to the stakeholder section is to consider what information the project manager would need to know about these stakeholders to be able to proceed with the planning of this project. It is important that you only provide examples of stakeholder information that would be useful and beneficial in the project planning stage.
Stakeholder Requirements (PMBOK® section 5.2): In this section, provide examples of 5 – 8 stakeholder requirements – the type that would be defined by the project sponsor or customer.
Note: Stakeholder requirements are different from the project’s detailed solution requirements that we will encounter in our project plan assignment. High-level stakeholder requirements are the types of things that an average customer would ask for (for example, what do you want as part of your dream house?) Remember to align your requirements to your project’s goals, objectives and the general scope of the project.
- Project Acceptance: At a high level, define how the stakeholders will determine if the project has been completed successfully. Beyond the project simply producing something that has been done on time and on budget, what criteria will be used to measure the project’s success? When starting any project, it is critical that the project manager understand how success will be determined. In this section you will be evaluated on how well you can articulate a few examples of what ‘success’ on a project of this nature would mean.
- Summary Budget: Develop a spending framework for the project that conveys the project sponsor’s funding priorities. Keep in mind that this is a high-level budget and it is not to the same level of detail as there would be in the project plan budget. Your summary budget should convey the project’s sponsor’s spending priorities.
- Project Manager Responsibilities and Authority Level (see PMBOK® section 9.1.3.1): In this section, you need to define the following:
- Identify who the project manager will be for this project;
- What the main responsibilities of the project manager are; and
- What authority has been assigned to the project manager to carry out their responsibilities?
- Document Approval Section: Create an approval section for the overall document that shows that the main stakeholders agree to the charter. This section should contain an appropriate approval statement and corresponding signature blocks. In this section you need to not only demonstrate an appropriate approval statement, but also demonstrate your knowledge of who needs to approve the project charter.
- Bibliography: Provide proper citation of all open-source resources that you have used in preparing your assignments. You will most likely be required to do research to complete this assignment – research is greatly encouraged, but drawing information directly from third-party material is not. You should minimize the use of third-party material, and if you need to use it, then it is important that you cite it within your work. At a minimum, any section that is found to contain any amount of uncited third-party material will receive a grade of zero. The College can impose additional sanctions, if deemed to be warranted.
[1] NOTE: The template provided in this assignment must be followed. Most students can easily fulfill all learning requirements for this assignment in approximately 6-9 pages.
(The page count does not include your cover page, Table of Contents and bibliography.)
