Project Charter Benefits

Make sure you state what the business benefits are going to be. While the charter needs to state what the new project is going to provide and make some general statements of what improvements might occur. You really need to state benefits in terms of the stakeholders and the organization. In real life your projects are going to be competing with other projects for approval and resources so you need to do your best to provide good clear benefits. You want management to read the charter and understand why it is important to the organization to do the project. You don't want them to read the charter and say, "So what?" "I don't see the benefit." "I see what you are trying to accomplish but I don't see how that benefits the organization."
Personally I feel building in slack or extra time in a project is a good practice. This would be extra time set aside for unexpected circumstances. I actually like the term contingency time. Unexpected things will happen. People will get sick, emergencies will occur, a key member of the team will quit, an activity or two will take longer than you expected. Having contingency time in your project will help absorb these things. Notice that I did not say anything about doing extra work not included in the scope. I do not feel this is what this type of time should be used for. Additional work that expands the scope should go through the change process and if approved the scope, time, cost and the schedule should be adjusted accordingly. It is tempting to add a little piece of work here and there but – avoid doing
It could range from a small amount of supplies to hiring someone to complete the entire project for you. Most organizations have guidelines/policies for making purchases and you will need to comply with those policies. The procurement management plan will be used by the project team as a guide for making purchases or entering into contracts. Some purchases are easy – you need some supplies so you go to your authorized vendor and get them without any bidding processes. Other purchases require much more effort. One major mistake I have seen often when making these larger acquisitions is a failure to specify exactly what is needed. Be it the acquisition of a piece of construction equipment to hiring a consultant to do an information systems project, specifying exactly what is needed is a key component to actually getting what you want. Simply, if you don’t know what it is you need, how do you know when you have it? For example, if you wanted to buy a new cell phone you would most likely think about what you would want it to do before you went to the cell phone dealer. You might say to yourself, “What do I want to do with my cell phone?” Then you may make a list – I want to make calls, I want to take picture, I want to be able to send the pictures to my friends, I want to text message, I want to access the Internet, and so on. Then armed with this list (your requirements/what you need