ABSTRACT
The Information System Division of a major Fortune 500 corporation develops applications to support the business. The division had been reviewing and approving the projects in a cross-divisional weekly meeting with the senior executives. The project charter is developed by the application development team working with the business to understand the scope of the proposed project. The project charter includes a description of the business opportunity, identi’cation of the customers and stakeholders, the goals and objectives of the project, as well as the metrics that assess the successful completion of the project. The project charter also includes identi’cation of the potential risks that could prevent the project from being successfully completed, and the assumptions that are assumed to be true. An initial estimate of the resources and project costs and the hard and soft bene’ts for doing the project are also assessed. The hard bene’ts identify ’nancial savings that impact the ’nancial statements, while the soft bene’ts include cost avoidance and intangible bene’ts to the business for doing the project. The customer signatures signifying buy-in to the project are also included on the project charter. The division’s Program Management Of’ce (PMO) provides project management standards, guidance, and training to the division. They have recently decentralized the project charter approval process to the senior vice presidents’ (SVP) areas. The review and approval of projects had been performed at a divisional level, looking only at projects that were greater than a thousand hours of effort. If projects were under 1000 hours of total effort, they were reviewed by VPs, but not across the SVP area. The goal was to get more visibility of all projects across the entire SVP area. The approval from the customer will be attained, and then the information system division SVP area will review the project charter to identify any cross-area con±icts or overlap and ensure that resources are available to work on the project.
