I was thrilled to have Lou Russell of RMA Associates as my guest next week on the podcast. She is a project management guru who cut her teeth in Accelerated Learning. In fact, she wrote the book,The Accelerated Learning Fieldbook: Making the Instructional Process Fast, Flexible, and Fun. Tune in to find the connection.
An excerpt from the podcast on her thoughts about Project Charters:
Lou Russell: One of the other things I think is just mystifying to me is that everybody, when left to their own devices, will skip project charter, skip it completely, and just do a schedule, because we have software for that. But we really don’t have the software for project charters – I guess we have templates, but it’s not cool enough – it doesn’t have, like, software. So, that means it mustn’t matter. Well, the project charter defines why you’re spending money on this project instead of something else. It gives you the whole reason for being of the project, and you skip it and build a schedule that’s supposed to actually be right? How can it be right? You don’t even know what you’re doing. That makes me crazy. That’s one of my little blasphemous pet-peeves, sorry.
Joe: I think you hit a very good point, because when you read any project management book, though they are discussing scope and charter, you are sitting there just waiting to get started.
Lou: Let’s go. Let’s build stuff.
Joe: That’s the feeling you get. What I like about your Project Manager for Trainers, OK – I mean, I love that book, because it’s very much, “Do it!” You know, here’s a charter, but do it.
Lou: Given that you’ve had the proper conversations, so let’s put that on the table – given that you’ve managed to capture long enough to get the need – basically, the project charter should take less than 45 minutes – it’s a draft. It’s always a draft. There’s no way you can build a final project charter before you’ve started the project. You don’t know what’s going on. It’s going to evolve. It’s an organic, evolving thing, as is the plan, and if neither of those are evolving – I know someone right now is having cardiac arrest about this – “You’re supposed to control a project!” No, you can’t. It doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the business. Anyway, if it isn’t changing, then no one needs that project – you should be cancelling it right now.