Have you ever heard of the saying “Ready… Aim… Fire…”?
Well, sad to say, but the majority of HR projects are better classified as “Fire… Ready… Aim…”
Said differently, the combination of being very busy, wanting to add value, and wanting to reduce risk, can very quickly move us to action without putting in the necessary thought or consideration of whether what we want to do makes sense, or even has a hope of solving the presenting problem.
It really is a knee-jerk reflexive action: “See a problem? Start fixing it!”
Have you ever been working on something only to find that someone else is working on something very similar – maybe in a part of HR serving another part of the business, or in a different region or country?
In this article we’re going to take a look at a key tool that
- can help reduce that happening so much; and…
- dramatically increases the likelihood of successful outcomes
(side-note: we’re going to be talking about Projects here, but this approach can be applied to regular day-to-day work just as easily – so don’t get hung-up on Project Management in the capitalized sense!)
So, with that brief introduction, let’s take a look at the most important tool you can use: the Project Charter.
What exactly is a Project Charter?
The Project Charter is a structured document with two-fold purpose. Firstly, we use it to capture key information about the project intent, charting the roadmap to success; and, secondly, we use it to engage key stakeholders sufficiently to authorize the project.
In this first screenshot from VPMHR, we’re looking at the top of the Project Charter as viewed by the Project Manager. This is where we hit the most important content of the Charter. Ignore the right-hand side for the moment
(we’ll be covering that later in this article)
and focus in on the first few sections on the left.
Project Name:
This should communicate what the work is about – quick tip, the snappier the better!
Mandate/Business Need:
Simply put, why are we doing this piece of work? It’s amazing how often we assume everyone understands – quick tip, a great business case combines FACTS and FEELINGS to justify going forward.
Deliverables:
The specific outcomes that will be in place once the work is complete. These may include milestones on the plan – quick tip, you don’t need to know every deliverable at Charter stage.
Success Criteria:
These are different to Deliverables, and may contain the how of the work and the outcomes achieved once the Deliverables are used/acted upon. For example, while a Deliverable may be “Training to do [this thing]“, a success criteria may look like “Quality of [this thing] improves across target populations” – quick tip, don’t try to be exhaustive with Success Criteria, stick to factors that are easy to assess.
Business Value Measures:
We use a grid here to define Quality, Cost and Timeliness measures of performance.These are the outcomes of the project in the business – quick tip, whatever we choose to measure, it is essential at this stage that a baseline can be measured, otherwise we can’t show we succeeded!
Now, let’s take a look at the bottom half of the Charter, starting with another critical area: Resources.
For years, I heard various bosses and HR leaders opining that they really didn’t know who was working on what. HR can be like that – we tend to either go it alone, or totally over-involve – and I’ve come across more than my fair share of people who put themselves on projects without even asking.
So, the Charter presents an ideal chance, before anything happens to ask the question:
Who will be working on this?
In VPMHR, this is really easily achieved by dragging the resource card into the applicable drop zone, thereby assigning:
Sponsor:
A Project Sponsor contributes executive direction to the ProjectTeam, providing an “umbrella” within which the team can operate to achieve agreed project deliverables.
Project Manager:
The primary role of a Project Manager is to structure work into a plan, and then ensure everything goes to plan, and handle things when it doesn’t. While also ensuring stakeholders are appropriately involved and briefed. And managing the Project Team, there’s that too. Needless to say the decision on Project Manager is second in importance only to that of Sponsor.
Project Team:
People who will work on project tasks and deliverables – quick tip, be very careful of over-involvement here.
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs):
People who will provide information and insight to the project team, and may advance specific deliverables – quick tip, once again be very careful of over-involvement here
(yes, it’s a recurring theme)
Choosing the right resource for a project is a really important step
(that’s why it spans several chapters of the book)
so it’s really worth using the Review cycle, which we’ll cover in a moment, to ask key stakeholders for their thoughts.
We finish the charter with a couple of items…
Functional intersections:
initial indications of where the project will extend beyond HR – e.g. IT, Finance, Legal, etc. – quick-tip, at Charter stage, there’s no need to be exhaustive, so think of it as “we may need to speak with these people about this…”
Lifecycle Plan:
This is where we outline the highest level of our potential project plan – don’t worry about specifics here, just provide windows of likely activity and key milestones. If you have a sense of costs, you can add them here, but it’s often more a case of “there could be some…” rather than a specific estimate – quick tip, whether you’re specifying a project or just a piece of work, using the PLANNING – DEVELOPMENT – IMPLEMENTATION – COMPLETE life-cycle will help structure your thinking.
And that’s it, our draft Charter is complete!
Now let’s see what people think of it, by putting it through a review cycle.
Why send it out for a review cycle?
Have you heard this in HR before?
“No-one told me that was happening!”
I have and a) it’s often true; and b) it’s often used as a place to hide passive-aggressive resistance, avoidance and denial.
This is why we want to make sure the Charter is reviewed by key stakeholders. For many years, I did this manually in emails and face-to-face discussions, with subsequent version control of documents – that’s a really sub-optimal way of achieving a complete review. So, when I built VPMHR, I made sure it had a complete Review and Approval toolset.
Take a look at this screenshot. The Charter has been advanced to Review by the Project Manager.
On the left of the screen is a Chrome window with the Project Manager’s view, and on the right, a Safari window with the Reviewer’s view.
(note: VPMHR allows multiple Reviewers and Approvers)
As you can see, that review discussion is captured for posterity and, although the screenshot doesn’t show it, the Project Manager can reverse the process back to Draft if the feedback is so strong.
This approach means that no-one can hide behind “No-one told me this was happening!” And that’s the sort of accountability step that pays back over time, especially when the implementation starts and change has to happen.
Talking of accountability…
Approvals? That sounds a lot like accountability?!
So, we’ve drafted and refined the charter, we’re ready to get it signed off. Now, this may be from the Sponsor alone, or it may include other stakeholders. In VPMHR, this is handled very similarly to Reviews – just invite the Approver, have the discussion in the tool and, when everything is agreed, Approve or Deny
(or take it back to Review or even Draft stage)
This screen shot shows how that looks on both sides of the communication. Note, the Approver can’t see the Review discussion – if you want that, they can be invited as a Reviewer instead, Approval is all about signing-off.
I mentioned it earlier but I want to repeat here because it’s really important, and often over-looked.
Accountability gets lost in multiple document passes, email folders, hallway chats, leadership team meetings… It’s the number one cause of HR project failure.
Whether you’re using VPMHR or a different project planning toolset, I can’t overstate the value of setting up a formal accountability chain
(this also plays out when managing Issues, Risks and Decisions once the project is underway, talking of which…)
And, just like that, you’re ready to get going!
So, you now have a comprehensive Charter for your project or piece of work. It’s been thoroughly reviewed by Key Stakeholders and received sufficient Approvals to get started. As Churchill said:
“It just might be the end of the beginning…”
In VPMHR, a single button click locks the Charter and creates the Project, with a lot of the content from the Charter feeding forward.
Even if you’re choosing to use other tools, you’ve done the work to establish a solid foundation and, as I always say:
“What starts well, ends better”
Here’s a quick video I made showing how easy it is to create and manage Project Charters in VPMHR.
VPMHR is project and program management built for HR – learn more and start your free trial today.
Read more about how to get things done in HR: “Project Management for Human Resources”.
Learn more about View Beyond’s HR Project Management Services.
