[Project] Charter Template

The following template is useful for cross-functional teams when kicking off a new project with our client-partners.

Summary & Objectives

Link to speclet info.

Stakeholders

Who are the main client stakeholders? Fill out the following table:

Stakeholder	Role	Contact	Notes
Name	Title	email/phone

Team

List the client and Lab Zero team connected to this project. Here’s an example:

Teammate	Role	Contact	Notes
Chris Greacen	Team Lead	chris@labzero.com
Dean Baker	Design	dean@labzero.com
Matt Wilson	CTO	matt@labzero.com
Kate Bennet	Product Manager	kate@labzero.com
Ned Holets	Tech Lead	ned@labzero.com

Project Timeline

Are there key meetings, milestones or cycles? List them here. A table or bulleted list — use the format that communicates it best. Are there scheduled team meetings such as stand-ups, design reviews, product demos? What is the cadence of those?

Example project cadence:

Day	Ceremonies
Monday	Standup
Tuesday	Standup, Design Review
Wednesday	Standup, Storytime
Thursday	Standup, Demo, Retro, Planning
Friday	Standup

Roles and Responsibilities

List the key artifacts and activities of the project. We recommend an alternative RACI scheme (see below) to describe how the team will work together.

RACI (alternative scheme): There is an alternative coding, less widely published but used by some practitioners and process mapping software, which modifies the application of the R and A codes of the original scheme. The overall methodology remains the same but this alternative avoids potential confusion of the terms accountable and responsible, which may be understood by management professionals but not always so clearly differentiated by others:

Responsible: Those responsible for the performance of the task. There should be exactly one person with this assignment for each task.

Assists: Those who assist/partner to complete a task. Usually people with this role share authorship.

Consulted: Those whose opinions are sought; and with whom there is two-way communication. People with this role can still have extensive involvement in an activity or artifact.

Informed: Those who are kept up-to-date on progress; and with whom there is one-way communication.

Each task/activity should have a “author.” Additional roles can be described as “contributor”, “informed”, or “test.” Other roles can also be defined. Use the chart below as an example and starting point, but feel free to change as necessary to reflect the team’s agreements and the engagement.

Artifact & Activities	Client Partner	Product	Design	Enginteering	DevOps	Business Agility
Metrics and hypotheses		responsible	consulted	consulted
Project coordination		responsible	assists	assists
Stakeholder management	assists	responsible	assists	assists
Team health	assists	responsible	assists	assists	assists	assists
Speclet		responsible	consulted	consulted
Charter		responsible	consulted	consulted
Personas		assists	responsible	consulted
Alignment maps		assists	responsible	consulted
Epics		responsible	assists	informed
Design system		consulted	responsible	consulted
User stories		responsible	assists	consulted
Wireframes		consulted	responsible	consulted
Interaction design		consulted	responsible	assists
Information architecture		consulted	responsible	consulted
Technical architecture		consulted	consulted	responsible
Code		acceptance test	acceptance test	responsible
CI/CD				consulted	responsible
Agile practice assessment		assists	assists	assists	assists	responsible
Agile coaching						responsible
Final delivery		responsible	assists	assists

Team Collaboration Tools

List the key tools to be used on the project. If there are any tools that should be avoided, consider noting that below the table.

Tool	Location / Notes
Internal Team Email List	Team email alias
Team Calendar	Calendar
Documents	Google docs location. Is there a scheme to organize the documents?
Task Tracking	Trello? Jira?
Internal Chat	Slack channel
Design	Sketch
Prototype	Invision?
Harvest	Project for Harvest tracking
Source Code	GitHub
Client Tools	Are there any client tools we are required to use?

Open questions/FAQ

List anything that we are not sure about or questions that frequently arise. As we get answers, we can list them here.

Q. For example, this has come up several times during discussions.

A. Here’s the answer.