By Zack SwinneyA project charter is the first step in the Six Sigma methodology. It takes place in the Define step of DMAIC, and the charter can make or break a successful project. It can make it by specifying necessary resources and boundaries that will in turn ensure success; it can break it by reducing team focus, effectiveness and motivation.
So what pieces are necessary and what are some tips people have learned over the years? Alright, let's get down to business. Here are the major project charter areas that are necessary. We'll start with an explanation of each, then at the end of the article you'll find a template that you can download, print and use today.
Necessary Project Charter Areas
Project Title:
It may not be evident at project inception, but you are going to complete the project and over time this project will hopefully serve as a best practice for other people within your business. It's important to name the project with a properly descriptive title that will allow others to quickly view and select your project based on the keywords and phrases. If you are increasing call center effectiveness, a possible title may be Call Center Cycle Time or Call Center Variation Reduction.
Black Belt/Green Belt:
This is the person leading the process improvement project. It's important to identify the project leader so management knows who's leading the efforts, and others can locate the leader for gathering further knowledge at a later date.
Mentor/Master Black Belt:
It's important to identify a resource for the project leader to 'lean on' if any project questions or issues arise (and they always do). Everyone needs a helping hand -- a successful project ensures that when it's needed, the helping hand has already been identified.
Project Start Date:
No project can maintain momentum indefinitely. This field is mainly for documentation purposes. It's the date the project or project leader formally started working on the project.
Anticipated Project End Date:
The anticipated project end date will probably be set by the mentor, master black belt or quality leader. The duration of the project will provide the leader and team adequate time to complete the project, given business conditions, work-load, holiday schedules, and such. Many businesses set general guidelines around how long projects should take.
Cost of Poor Quality:
It's sometimes easy, other times difficult, to quantify the cost of poor quality that is being produced by your process. If scrap is being produced -- quantify it. If excess hours are being spent by employees performing manual and redundant activities -- quantify it. If violations and fines are being levied (oh my, I hope not!) -- quantify it. It just needs to give business leaders an order of magnitude guesstimate of your project savings. If you're going to save the business $6,000 over the next year, that may not be a project on which to focus an entire team.
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