Now that your charter is approved and project initiation is well underway, you might be tempted to put the charter in a drawer and charge ahead. Don’t do that. Use the charter as a tool to help keep the project on the rails. The project manager and team members should refer to the charter throughout the project to ensure they are still coloring inside the lines and are taking actions that will deliver the desired outcomes. Revisit the project charter when you reach major milestones, such as life-cycle phase gates or the completion of iterations or increments. You might find that conditions have changed such that the charter needs to be tweaked to conform to the new reality. Occasionally, it even becomes necessary to terminate the project before completion. You might judge that the risks of continuing have become too great, or perhaps it’s clear that certain success criteria cannot be fulfilled. Putting the project out of its misery might be the best choice.

Chartering is the culmination of project initiation. The charter contains enough information to allow the critical stakeholders to decide whether to approve the project. It also contains enough information to let the project manager begin assembling the team and to develop appropriately detailed plans. Without a charter, project participants can wander about ineffectively without a shared mission and purpose. With an approved charter in hand, though, the project manager has a good start on the challenges that lie ahead.