Project Charter Template
A professionally structured Word document for formally authorizing a project. Covers scope, objectives, stakeholders, budget, timeline, risks, and governance — the essential starting point for any project.
What’s inside
- Scope, objectives, and success criteria
- Stakeholder register and governance structure
- Blank Template + Filled Example
About this download
The Project Charter Template is a formally structured Word document that authorises a project, aligns stakeholders on scope and objectives, and establishes the governance framework under which the work will be executed. In mature project management practice — whether PMI, PRINCE2 or a custom delivery framework — the charter is the single most important governance artefact because it is the agreement everyone comes back to when scope disputes, budget pressures or stakeholder changes inevitably arise.
The template covers every section expected in a professional charter: project title and identifier, executive summary, business case and justification, scope (in-scope, out-of-scope, assumptions, constraints), objectives and success criteria expressed as SMART statements, key deliverables, high-level milestones, budget and funding source, stakeholder register with roles, a RACI for decision rights, project organisation and governance (sponsor, steering committee, project manager, workstream leads), top risks and mitigation approach, communication plan, a formal approval and sign-off block, and a document-control and revision-history section.
This charter is used at the point of project initiation — after the business case has been approved but before the project plan is built — and it becomes the reference document for every subsequent governance forum. It is equally suited to infrastructure programmes, software implementations, organisational change initiatives, regulatory compliance projects, product development programmes, M&A integration workstreams and capital projects. Project managers, programme directors, PMO staff, sponsors and steering committee chairs will all recognise the structure.
A well-written charter is short enough to read in 15 minutes (ideally 5–8 pages) but specific enough that two readers will interpret the scope identically. The filled example inside the download walks through a realistic ERP implementation so first-time project managers can see how good objectives, clean scope boundaries and a credible benefits case read in practice. Formatting is clean, styles are applied consistently, and the document is set up for easy branding by replacing the header and footer placeholders.
When the charter is approved, Vizually lets you take the milestones, deliverables and stakeholder map straight into a visual project board, so the governance document and the live plan stay in perfect sync and every change request can be traced back to the original authorising agreement.