Project Charter

Regardless of the degree of innovation you re hoping to accomplish, you should always make time for a Project Charter. It s important to note that the Project Charter is not a static document you finalize early on, but rather a dynamic technique that should be revisited, refined, and updated throughout the life of the project. 

The Project Charter and Innovation Financial Management are two of the most important techniques in this book. After all, you can generate thousands of clever ideas, but if no one needs or wants what you have to offer then your time and money is wasted. Therefore, don t overlook the value of spending time up front, and throughout the project, continually verifying that your innovation is marketable, feasible, and able to bring your organization a profit. 

Scenario Pikes Peak Coffee owns 32 coffee shops in three Western states. For the past three quarters, the company has failed to deliver the type of growth that stockholders are accustomed to seeing. One idea to spur growth is to add a healthy, fresh breakfast item to the menu. Thus, the innovation project Operation Feeding Frenzy was begun to determine what type of breakfast offering would outperform the competition. We ll use the company s Project Charter to demonstrate this key technique (Exhibit 10.1). 

EXHIBIT 10.1 (Downloadable). This is a template for an Innovation Project Charter. As you move through the project, you will constantly revise this document. 

To ensure that your innovation will provide real value to customers, it s important to understand the major outcomes that are not currently satisfied by existing solutions. Use Outcome Expectations (Technique 2) to generate a list of expectations associated with the JTBD. Then, on the Project Charter, list the key unmet expectations. Use the format direction (minimize), measurement (time needed to acquire), object of action (breakfast), and context (in the busy morning). 

Most business endeavors evolve from a series of assumptions related to functionality, outcomes, value, process, price, and so on. To identify which key assumptions need to be tested for your innovation, start by creating a comprehensive list of assumptions that are built into your idea. You can use the approach of Innovation Financial Management (Technique 11) to help with this task. Once you have a comprehensive list, prioritize your assumptions and select ones that will have the greatest impact on the success of the innovation. List these on the Project Charter. 

Financial projections are often one of the most scrutinized aspects of an innovation Project Charter, especially when executives are trying to select which few innovation projects to fund. Almost all financial projections include estimates of revenue. Or, you can estimate profitability using Innovation Financial Management (Technique 11). Either way, the financial projections listed on the Project Charter should be estimated from the point your innovation will be available to customers, and should align with the company s current accounting periodicity (monthly, quarterly, annually). 

The extent to which you can complete the innovation financial management documents early in the project depends on the level of innovation you hope to achieve. During incremental innovation, your initial ratio of knowledge to assumptions (Exhibit 11.1) will be higher than for substantial or breakthrough innovation. In either case, you should update the relevant financial documents, as well as the Project Charter, as you uncover new data throughout the project. 

Scenario To demonstrate the basics of innovation financial management, we ll continue the Pikes Peak Coffee example from the Project Charter technique (Technique 10). The company can use this approach to determine the profitability of adding a healthy, portable breakfast offering to its menu. 

If you ve completed a Project Charter, you ve established the business case for your innovation. Innovation hnancial management takes over from here and begins with a list of what you know (verihed knowledge), as well as what you need to find out (unverihed assumptions and unknowns). 

What job, problem, or task creates the focus for your innovation effort What are its associated customer and provider outcome expectations Have you already created a project statement or job statement See Jobs To Be Done, Outcome Expectations, and Project Charter (Techniques 1, 2, and 10 respectively). 

Set an overall strategy for the organization. In addition to supply chain considerations, this should include a vision, a project charter, financial objectives, possible mergers and acquisitions, product development plans, and operations improvement. 

Generally, only vague information is available at the beginning of a project and thus, as a first step, the project charter is formulated and defined. Frequently, specifications covering aspects of project planning and implementation are included. Moreover, problems and tasks are defined, targets of the project are recorded, and a description of the service to be rendered is created. These requirement specifications built the basis for the formulation of the project charter. Besides, a feasibility study, an effort estimation, a profitability analysis, and a risk analysis is covered in this starting phase. 

However, different possibilities exist on how to fulfill the project charter. Hence, each version of the project should be evaluated with regard to its feasibility, required effort, profitability, and its possible risks. Based on this... 

In project management, a project charter or project definition (sometimes called the terms of reference) is a statement of the scope, objectives and participants in a project. It provides a preliminary delineation of roles and responsibilities, outlines the project objectives, identifies the main stakeholders, and defines the authority of the project manager. It serves as a reference of authority for the future of the project. 

Project charter It is a working document for defining the terms of reference of each Six Sigma project. The charter can make a successful project by specifying necessary resources and boundaries that will in turn ensure success. 

Voice-Of-Customer (VOC) Voice-Of-Employee (VOE) Critical-To-Quallty (CTQ) tre< Project Charter... 

Due to space constraints only some results will be presented, however the entire study can be found in (Freitas, 2014). Results from the Define phase highlighted the opportunities for improving the production process, for instance in the Defrosting process two improvement opportunities were identified high physical demand and lack of process standardization. At the end of the 1st phase (Define) the Project Charter was defined. Table 1 is an extract of such charter. The project duration was 8 months, the team members and the deadlines were also defined. 

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