If your company is preparing to get started on a new project but doesn’t understand the best way of executing the problem, try Project Charter. It can be a challenging task if you don’t know what material to gather, how the task should be divided, and more. Therefore, trying this process gives you a clear roadmap of every component of the project.

After having clear goals and directions for the project, you need an efficient tool to help your team visualize the contents. With this article, we'll explore the various components and purposes of the charter process with examples. We'll go through a detailed step-by-step guide on how Xmind helps you create a complete Project Charter.

What Is a Project Charter and Why Is It Essential?

A Project Charter is like a company’s go-to guidelines that provide them with exactly what the project should be about, who should be involved, and more. Moreover, it is like a document that kickstarts an organization’s work if they don’t understand how it should be executed. Your team can start by creating a brief that is like an idea board that you can refer back to.

Furthermore, the charter's primary purpose is to act as a formal document that aligns stakeholders' expectations for the project and establishes an authority. In comparison to an essay plan, a charter process incorporates all relevant details necessary to complete a project. Your team can use these guidelines to identify potential objections, challenges, and more.

Key Components

Like every project documentation, the Project Charter template also follows a specific structure that involves key components. We have provided you with these essential factors that ensure the effectiveness of the project:

1. Scope of the Project: The scope of a collaborative work provides you with defined objectives, success criteria, and expected outcomes, which fall under the responsibility of a project sponsor.

2. Essential Goals: When you want to ensure alignment within the business, having proper goals should be a first when starting a team project.

3. Key Stakeholders: In collaborative work, identifying all the key stakeholders is essential for the work cycle, as these include the team members, clients, sponsors, and more.

4. Risk Identification: Teams should be aware of the potential risks as they set a base before starting work, like budget restraints, shortage of resources, and more.

When the Project Charter is used as a project management strategy, high-performance companies have proven to perform 2.5 times better in successfully reaching their goals. Moreover, with defined stakeholders and sponsors, organizations are able to complete their projects with a 40% success rate actively engaged sponsors to have 40% more successful projects than organizations with a lower percentage of projects (less than 50%).

How to Use Xmind to Create a Complete Project Charter

As we discussed the purpose and objectives of the project charter, you can achieve the same detailed guidelines for your team. Moreover, to make them more visually engaging and easy to understand, use Xmind. This is a powerful and excellent mind-mapping tool that offers you several project charter templates catering to all your project needs.

You can start by tossing your ideas in the brainstorming hub and using AI for content generation with this tool's dynamic tools. Furthermore, these ideas can turn into defined objectives that everyone would agree on, creating a foundation for the project. To make complex tasks easier, break them into simplified points with the topic and subtopic features. So, let's learn how to execute a whole project by following the step guide:

Step 1. Start with a Clear Project Title

Start by logging in to the Xmind website with your Google account, and from the main workspace, click the “New Map” option to reveal the project charter templates. After choosing the desired one, press the “Central Node” of the mind map and enter your desired project name. Next, customize the text format using the “Style” tab in the right-side panel.

Step 2. Define Project Objectives and Goals

Choose the central node, head to the below toolbar to select the "Topic" option to create sub categories of the main project name. Once added, write the desired objective, scope, stakeholder, and other sections.

Next, color them by opening the “Show or Hide Style and Format Options” icon and picking a color in the “Color Theme” tab.

Step 3. Outline the Project Scope and Deliverables

After that, proceed to break down all the added objectives and goals with the “Subtopic” icon in the below “Action” bar. This hierarchical structure gives your project a defined look that you can enhance by choosing certain tasks and adding a “Boundary.”

Step 4. Identify Stakeholders and Their Roles

Moving forward, add the stakeholders and sponsor by clicking the “Stakeholder” node. Now, press the “Subtopic” icon and add the responsible personnel. Next, access the “Add a Marker to Selected Topics” panel and open the “Marker” tab. From here, click the individual stakeholders and add desired “People” stickers to them and assign those stickers to specific tasks to ensure everyone’s roles.

Step 5. Budget and Timeline Management

In the “Budget & Resources” node, estimate how much the whole project will cost by creating a subtopic. Afterward, choose the “Timeline” nodes, expand the note with subtopics, and add desired project timing, deadlines, and priority tasks. Create links between tasks by selecting the “Relationship” icon in the action bar to indicate urgency.

Step 6. Review and Share Project Charter Mind Map

Before sharing the mind map with the stakeholders, the team can add their input on the mind map by choosing the “Note” or “Comment” options from the optional bar. Now, hit the “Share” button at the top, click the “Enter Email to Invite” box, and write the desired stakeholder's email. Once added, press the “Send Invitations” button to allow them real-time collaboration.

Real-Life Project Charter Example

Organizations can efficiently utilize this process to execute a project with the above-discussed min-mapping step guide. If you're still having difficulty understanding, let's look at a project charter example on the Office Relocation Project. In this example, the company needs to ensure what type of office space to select, where to set up the IT infrastructure, and more.

Other key objectives include completing the move on schedule, upgrading network security, and operational costs. In the end, the sponsors will oversee the execution and see if all the requirements are met before the relocation deadline.

Tips for Creating Effective Project Charters With Xmind

Considering the previous project charter example, you can create an engaging and collaborative mind map using Xmind. Following are some tips you can try in the creation of a mind map:

1. Involve the Right Stakeholders: From the start of the project, it is essential to involve the right sponsor and stakeholders that ensure your project aligns with the goals and objectives.

2. Clear and Concise: Having unnecessary details can distract you from the main objective, scope, and milestones, so making them concise and clear is better for the work.

3. Use Mind Maps: We learned that having a visual presentation of the teamwork can make it easy, so leverage Xmind’s visual mapping tools to organize project details and roles.

4. Update it Regularly: Whenever progress is made, ensure to revise and update the charter regularly so as to let it remain a reliable reference point.

Conclusion

This article provided a detailed explanation of the Project Charter and how beneficial it is in project management. Moreover, we looked at one of the perfect tools to present the components of the charter process, and that is with Xmind.

We looked at a thorough step-by-step guide of Xmind and learned to create a mind map on a project with its action options. Use the following pre-made project charter template of this tool and get started creating your project.