Project charter - Introduction of a digital citizen service portal (BSP-2026)
- Sponsor
- First Deputy Mayor, City of Lindenau
- Project manager
- Dr Anke Berger, Head of Organisational Development
- Duration
- 01/05/2026 - 30/06/2027 (14 months)
- Budget
- €480,000
- Version
- 1.0, approved 28/04/2026
- Document status
- Project charter (approved, section 8)
1 Starting position
- Starting position1
- Around 60 percent of enquiries at the citizens' office concern applications that could be handled online. The waiting time for an appointment is up to three weeks. On 12 March 2026 the city council resolved to introduce a portal and allocated €480,000 in the budget.
2 Project objective and scope
- Project objective2
- By 30 June 2027 the twelve most requested services of the citizen service, public order and social affairs departments can be applied for online, and the waiting time for an appointment at the citizens' office is five working days at most.
How achievement of the objective is measured
| No. | Measure3 | Target value | By |
|---|---|---|---|
| O1 | Services of the citizen service, public order and social affairs departments that can be applied for online | the twelve most requested services | 30/06/2027 |
| O2 | Waiting time for an appointment at the citizens' office | five working days at most | 30/06/2027 |
- Exclusions (out of scope)4
- Not part of the project: replacing the residents' register software, introducing an electronic file in the building department, and connecting the municipal utilities.
- Deliverables5
- Portal in production with twelve online services; connection to the state service account; training material for 35 case workers; operations manual.
3 Milestones
| No. | Milestone (accepted result)6 | Date |
|---|---|---|
| M1 | Functional concept approved | 31/07/2026 |
| M2 | Contract awarded | 30/09/2026 |
| M3 | Pilot with three services | 30/11/2026 |
| M4 | Interface to residents' register accepted | 31/01/2027 |
| M5 | All twelve services online | 30/04/2027 |
| M6 | Handover to regular operation | 30/06/2027 |
4 Budget and resources
5 Risks and assumptions
| No. | Risk9 | Response |
|---|---|---|
| R1 | The interface to the residents' register will not be available until the second quarter of 2027 | Pilot with services that do not access the register |
- Assumptions
- The vendor of the register software delivers the interface under the maintenance contract.
6 Project organisation
- Steering committee10
- First Deputy Mayor (chair), head of citizen service department, head of IT coordination, staff council (advisory). Monthly meeting.
- Project team
- One person each from the three departments, IT coordination, vendor after award.
7 Changes to the charter
| Version | Date | Change11 |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 28/04/2026 | First version, approved |
8 Sign-off
- Sign-off12
- This project charter is approved in the version stated at the top, covering sections 1 to 7. By signing, the sponsor commits budget, resources and timely decisions, and the project manager commits to the objective and schedule within the scope described.
- Place, date
- Lindenau, 28 April 2026
- Signature sponsor
- First Deputy Mayor, City of Lindenau
- Signature project manager
- Dr Anke Berger
Notes on the fields
- 1Starting position: Why now, and who decided. Three to five sentences with figures; no paragraph on how important digitalisation is.
- 2Project objective: Measurable and dated. "Improve citizen service" is not an objective; "twelve services online by 30/06/2027" is.
- 3Measure: One row per objective. If you cannot name a measure or a date, the objective is not yet ready for the charter.
- 4Exclusions (out of scope): The field that saves the most trouble later. Everything someone might expect that is not coming.
- 5Deliverables: What physically exists at the end and can be accepted. Not activities ("run workshops") but results.
- 6Milestone (accepted result): Four to eight milestones with dates. Each is an accepted result, not a phase.
- 7Budget (external funds): Total amount and breakdown by item, e.g. software, interfaces, training, contingency.
- 8Internal effort: External money and internal person-days kept separate. The person-days are the part that gets argued about later.
- 9Risk: The three biggest risks with responses, and the assumptions schedule and budget rest on. If an assumption fails, the charter no longer holds as written.
- 10Steering committee: Members with their role, chair, meeting frequency. Who decides when objective, budget or schedule no longer hold?
- 11Change: If objective, budget or schedule change, a new version with new signatures is created. The old version stays valid until the new one is signed.
- 12Sign-off: Two signatures: sponsor and project manager. Without the second it is a wish, not a charter.
What a project charter is and why you need one
The project charter is the agreement between sponsor and project manager with which a project officially begins. It records why the project is being done, what should exist at the end, what explicitly does not belong to it, how much money and time there is, and who decides. In German organisations the same sheet goes by Projektauftrag, Projektantrag, Projektvereinbarung or Projektdefinition - the terms overlap, the document is essentially the same.
One small distinction is still useful: the project proposal is the version before the decision, with which someone asks for approval. The project charter is the version after the decision, with signatures. This template works for both - the proposal is the charter without the sign-off field.
A project charter is one to three pages long. It only gets longer when attachments creep in that belong elsewhere: the project plan, the business case, the requirements specification. The charter refers to them; it does not contain them.
The template comes as a Word file and as a PDF, plus the completed sample from the fictional "Citizen Service Portal" project of the City of Lindenau shown above - the same project that also appears in the project brief, the status report and the stakeholder analysis of this collection.
How to fill in the project charter template
Top to bottom, with one exception: write the exclusions before you finalise the objectives. Whoever first writes down what is not coming formulates the objective more sharply afterwards. In the Lindenau example the portal without replacing the register software is a different project from the one with it - and the sponsor needs to know that before signing.
The starting position needs figures: how many applications, what waiting time, which resolution. The objective needs a date and a measure. For the deliverables, ask of every line whether it can be accepted - a manual yes, "create acceptance" no. Milestones are results with dates, not phases; "concept phase" is not a milestone, "functional concept approved on 31/07" is.
In the budget, separate external money from internal person-days. The external money sits in the budget or cost plan and gets controlled; the person-days are what the departments later reject as "we never agreed to that" if they are not in the charter. Risks: the three biggest, each with a response. Assumptions: what schedule and budget rest on - if one fails, the charter no longer holds as written.
Finally the sign-off with date and version. If the charter changes later, there is a version 1.1 with new signatures, not a silent overwrite. The numbered notes on the sheet above go through the fields one by one.
Typical mistakes in project charters
- The objective is a wish
- "Modernise the citizen service" - everyone signs that, and nobody can say later whether it was achieved. An objective has a measure and a date. If you cannot state both, the project is not yet ready for a charter.
- No exclusions
- The field stays empty because it is awkward to tell a department that its electronic file is not included. Six months later exactly that expectation comes back as a change request, and by then it is more expensive.
- Milestones are phases
- "Concept phase, implementation phase, rollout phase" - those are periods, not results. A milestone is reached or not; a phase is always somehow "80 percent done".
- Internal person-days missing
- The budget names the €480,000 for the vendor but not the 260 person-days from the departments. Those then surface in month three as a capacity conflict nobody agreed to.
- The charter is never updated
- After the first change (new budget, new date) version 1.0 stays in force because nobody wants to collect the signatures again. From then on everyone refers to a different document.
When the Word template stops being enough
For one project a year the file is perfectly fine. It gets difficult when a PMO or an administration receives twenty project proposals a year and has to decide which ones run: then twenty Word files sit in twenty mailboxes, none is comparable, and nobody can answer "how many proposals are open right now" off the cuff.
In WORKSPACE.PM the project proposal is a record with a processing status that becomes the project after approval:
| In the file | WORKSPACE.PM |
|---|---|
| Every proposal is a Word file in a mailbox; nobody knows how many are open. | Project proposals sit in a filterable list; number and status are available at any time. |
| Whether a proposal is under review, deferred or approved is buried in the e-mail thread. | Every proposal carries a processing status that is set in the proposal and filtered in the list. |
| After approval, objectives, budget and dates are typed into the project again. | An approved proposal is converted into a project; budget, labels, attachments and team are carried over. |
| An overview of all proposals is built once a year in an Excel sheet by hand. | A report provides aggregated figures across all project proposals. |
This template exists in WORKSPACE.PM as the project proposal
In WORKSPACE.PM a project proposal is created and edited as a record, carries a processing status and appears in a filterable list of all proposals. A report summarises figures across all project proposals. An approved proposal is converted into a project.
See project proposals in WORKSPACE.PMThe same template with placeholders - for upload into WORKSPACE.PM
The Word version also comes with placeholders in double curly braces instead of free text, such as projekt.name for the project name. Upload it under Administration, Document templates; on upload the number of recognised placeholders is shown. From then on you generate the project charter from the project file with current project data. Placeholders without a data source are shown before generating and can be filled in by hand.
Frequently asked questions about the project charter template
01What does the template cost, and do I have to sign up?
Nothing, and no. The file sits directly behind the link, without a form and without an e-mail address.
02What is the difference between a project charter and a project proposal?
The project proposal is the document before the decision - someone asks for approval. The project charter is the same document after the decision, signed by sponsor and project manager. This template serves both; for the proposal leave the sign-off field empty.
03What is the difference from the project brief?
The project charter is the agreement, one to three pages, signed. The brief is the one-page summary for people who need to know the project, not steer it. Both are available here as templates, with the same sample project.
04How long should a project charter be?
One to three pages. If it gets longer, things have usually crept in that are documents in their own right: the project plan, the business case, the requirements specification. The charter refers to those.
05Who signs the project charter?
Sponsor and project manager. The sponsor commits to budget and decisions, the project manager to objective and date. In public administration a third signature from the head of department, committing the person-days, is common.
06Does the template work in LibreOffice?
It is built for it: no macros, only standard Word features, and the fields are table cells rather than form fields. LibreOffice replaces the Calibri font with Carlito, which has the same character widths. The template has been tested with Microsoft Office.
07May I adapt the template and use it at work?
Yes, commercially too, in any number of projects, with your own logo and fields. Only resale and publication as your own template are excluded.
Submit the next project proposal in the tool instead of in a file
The sandbox opens a WORKSPACE.PM instance with demo projects, no registration. Create a project proposal there and convert it into a project once it is approved.
Up and running in five minutes, no credit card.