Goal Setting for Projects

Overview

On this page, we will discuss:

• Project Charter
• Requirements

Project Charter

Much like a team charter, a project charter is a document that "formally authorizes the existence of a project and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities" (PMI, 2004, p. 368).

Some core components of a charter include:

• Details about the project team (who will participate?)
• The project's purpose/business case
• The project scope/requirements

OPTIONAL Video: Create A Project Charter | Project Management Made Simple

Alexis Allen from Project Management Made Simple is a Project Management Professional, Certified ScrumMaster, and Agile Certified Practitioner. In the video Create a Project Charter Links to an external site. she explains the work involved in creating a project charter, and highlights key questions this document can help answer, such as: 

• Why was the project undertaken? 
• What milestones should the project meet?
• What outcomes or results are expected?

This external video has auto-generated captions, which may contain errors. Download the transcript (PDF Download PDF | DOC Download DOC).

Requirements

As mentioned in the Introduction to Project Management, a project is a temporary endeavour. This means that it must have a clearly defined end.

There are many reasons why a project reaches its conclusion; however, as project managers, we hope that a project ends because it has reached its final goal. But how do we know what our goals are and if we have reached them? An understanding of our requirements and scope can help us with this.

Three Types of Requirements

Requirements are conditions or tasks that must be completed to ensure the success or completion of a project (Scavetta, 2022).

Requirements are collected from project stakeholders and should be clear, concise, verifiable, consistent, complete, and traceable (PMI, 2021). Requirements help answer the question: what is needed from this project for it to be successful?

There are three types of requirements:

• business,
• solution/technical, and
• stakeholder requirements (Scavetta, 2022).

Activity: Types of Requirements

Remember Yasmin? As you may remember from our example of Principles of Universal Design and our lesson on Leadership Styles, Yasmin is now a Software Development Intern. Currently, she's working on a project to research a new technology, "ASIPStudio", and present her findings back to her team.

Yasmin's supervisor has a few requirements for her project:

1. It must be presented in a format that aligns with existing team software for ease of access; in this case, Yasmin's team uses Microsoft Office suite.
2. It must tell us if it can be used to meet corporate social responsibility (CSR) needs.
3. Yasmin's research must come with an accompanying business report so members from other teams can read and use the results. This was requested by another team's manager.
4. From Yasmin's research, her supervisor would like to hear recommendations for next steps for the team.

Which of these are "business requirements", "stakeholder requirements" and "solution/technical requirements"?

Instructions:

Drag each requirement to match it with the category where it fits best.

Note: This activity is best experienced on a laptop or desktop computer. Mobile devices are not recommended.

Determining the Requirements

After you have been assigned a project or activity, usually the project sponsor or customer will provide some details related to what the project is and how it may be completed. These are most often the starting requirements. In many cases, other stakeholders will have other requirements that they would like to be included.

It is a project manager's job to first determine who the stakeholders are that need to be consulted, and then to carry out the collection of these requirements in an organized manner. This process is essential because it ensures that stakeholders feel they are a part of the process; this, in turn, increases the chances of agreement, provides opportunities for clarification, and reduces the chances that new requirements will be introduced later in the process.

Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM)

Project managers often capture requirements in a document called the "Requirement Traceability Matrix" (RTM). This document creates a clear process for documenting the requirements, who the requirements came from, and what is within and beyond your project's scope.

We will explore Requirement Traceability Matrices in more detail when we discuss Monitoring and Controlling in the next module. You can find an example of a Requirement Traceability Matrix in the Project Management Resource Sample Library.

References

Project Management Institute (PMI). (2004). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK Guide) (3rd ed.). Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.

Project Management Institute (PMI). (2021). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK Guide) (7th ed.). Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.

Project Mgmt Made Simple. (2021, July 11). Create a project charter [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWwRenbCzrw Links to an external site.

Scavetta, A. (2022, July 15). Project requirements management: A quick guide. ProjectManager. https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/requirements-management Links to an external site.