Project brief - Citizen Service Portal (BSP-2026)
- Sponsor
- First Deputy Mayor, city council resolution of 12/03/2026
- Project manager
- Dr Anke Berger, Head of Organisational Development
- Duration
- 01/05/2026 - 30/06/2027 (14 months)
- Budget
- €480,000 (budget line 1.1110.935100)
- Status (as of)
- In progress, amber (as of 31/12/2026)
- Starting position1
- Applications for residence certificates, housing benefit and resident parking permits are currently submitted on paper. This creates around 9,000 manual entries a year at the citizens' office and waiting times of up to three weeks.
- Project objective2
- By 30/06/2027 the twelve most requested services of the citizen service, public order and social affairs departments can be applied for online; at least 40 percent of these applications arrive digitally in the first year of operation.
- Benefit3
- Citizens submit applications without an appointment and without paper; the citizens' office regains an estimated 1.5 full-time posts for advice; the city complies with the Online Access Act for these services.
- Exclusions4
- Not part of the project: replacing the residents' register software, the 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
- Milestones6
- Functional concept approved 31/07/2026 · Contract awarded 30/09/2026 · Pilot with three services 30/11/2026 · All twelve services online 30/04/2027 · Handover to regular operation 30/06/2027
- Participants7
- Citizen service department (functional lead) · Public order and social affairs departments (subject experts) · IT coordination (operations, interfaces) · Staff council (co-determination) · Portal software vendor (after award)
- Risks8
- Interface to the residents' register software not available in time · Staff council rejects the process change (works agreement by October 2026) · Additional demands from departments after the functional concept
Notes on the fields
- 1Starting position: Two sentences anyone without prior knowledge understands. One figure that makes the problem tangible.
- 2Project objective: The same objective as in the project charter, word for word. If the brief states a different objective from the charter, nobody trusts either.
- 3Benefit: Benefit is not objective. The objective is what the project delivers; the benefit is what the organisation gets from it - for citizens, for the administration, legally.
- 4Exclusions: Short version of the exclusions from the project charter. On a single page this is the first thing to get cut - and then asked about.
- 5Deliverables: Four to six bullet points, each an acceptable result.
- 6Milestones: The five most important, with dates. The brief shows a selection, the project plan shows all.
- 7Participants: Organisational units and roles, no names except project manager and sponsor - the brief should survive staff changes.
- 8Risks: The three biggest, without rating or responses - those are in the risk register.
What a project brief is and who reads it
The project brief is the short description of a project on one page: objective, benefit, exclusions, deliverables, milestones, budget, participants, risks. Depending on the organisation it is also called project profile, project sheet, project overview, fact sheet or project one-pager. It is always the same sheet.
It is read by people who do not steer the project but need to be informed: the management board or the mayor before a meeting, a new team member in their first week, the PMO for the portfolio overview, the head of department who is asked why their staff are giving up person-days. For all of them the project charter is too long and the status report too specific.
The difference from the project charter: the charter is the signed agreement, the brief is the summary of it. The difference from the status report: the status report changes monthly, the brief only when the project itself changes - new budget, new end date, new scope.
The template comes as a Word document (one page) and as a PowerPoint slide with the same structure for presentations and project overviews, plus a PDF. The completed sample above is from the fictional "Citizen Service Portal" project of the City of Lindenau - the same project as in the other templates of this collection.
How to fill in the project brief template
It is easiest when the project charter already exists: then the brief is an abridgement. Copy the objective word for word, boil the exclusions down to one sentence, pick the five most important milestones, copy budget and duration. If the brief comes before the charter - say for a project proposal - write it so that it can later be carried over into the charter verbatim.
The section most people get stuck on is the benefit. The objective is what the project delivers (twelve services online); the benefit is what the organisation gets from it (no more appointments needed, 1.5 posts for advice, Online Access Act met). Whoever puts both into one field ends up with either an unmeasurable objective or a benefit nobody understands.
Under participants, list organisational units and roles, not names - except project manager and sponsor. The brief should still be correct after a staff change. Under risks, only the headings of the three biggest; rating and responses belong in the risk register. Under "Status (as of)" enter only phase and traffic light on the reporting date, for example "In progress, amber (as of 31/12/2026)"; reasons and details belong in the status report.
A brief is one page. If it gets longer, cut rather than shrink the font. The numbered notes on the sheet above go through the fields one by one.
Typical mistakes in project briefs
- The brief says something different from the charter
- The objective was rephrased to be "catchier" for the brief, and now there are two objectives. Copy the objective verbatim. The starting position may be catchy, the objective may not.
- Benefit and objective mixed up
- "Objective: improve citizen service and reduce waiting times" - that is a benefit, not an objective. Without a measurable objective nobody knows at the end whether the project is finished.
- Two pages
- Nobody reads page two. Whoever cannot fit the brief on one page either has too many milestones in it or is already describing the solution.
- Names instead of roles
- "Mr Müller, Ms Schulz, Mr Kaminski" - after the first change the sheet is wrong. Roles and organisational units last.
- The brief turns into a status report
- Someone enters progress monthly, and now the brief has versions. Progress, reasons and actions belong in the status report; under "Status (as of)" the brief shows only phase and traffic light on the reporting date. Otherwise it changes only when the project changes.
When the Word template stops being enough
For a single project the file is exactly right. The problem starts when a PMO maintains fifteen briefs: each sits in a different folder, the budget in the brief no longer matches the cost plan, and the milestones were last updated in spring. For the portfolio overview the fifteen sheets are then transferred into a table by hand.
In WORKSPACE.PM the brief is the project's one-pager, and its tiles show the project data that is maintained anyway:
| In the file | WORKSPACE.PM |
|---|---|
| Duration, budget and status are typed into the brief and quietly go stale. | The conditions tile compares planned and actual dates, budget and status, with days remaining or overdue. |
| The three risks in the brief are the ones from four months ago. | The risks tile shows the main open risks with likelihood, risk value and responses, linking through to the register. |
| Participants are listed as text; only the project manager knows who is currently on the team. | The team tile lists members flagged as project manager, deputy and initiative owner, including externals without an account. |
| For the committee meeting the brief is transferred to a slide once more. | The one-pager is exported to PDF with the visible tile layout, for steering committees or recipients without system access. |
This template exists in WORKSPACE.PM as the project one-pager
Every project in WORKSPACE.PM has a one-pager: a single-page summary made of predefined tiles for overview, short description, team, conditions, key figures, deliverables, risks and finances. The header tile carries a health score computed from critical risks and overdue work packages; the deliverables tile lists containers and milestones with date, progress and status. Short description, starting position, benefit and motivation are maintained as widgets on the project home page. The one-pager exports to PDF.
See the project one-pager in WORKSPACE.PMThe same template with placeholders - for upload into WORKSPACE.PM
The Word version also comes with placeholders in double curly braces (such as projekt.name) in the fields. Upload it in WORKSPACE.PM under Administration as a document template; afterwards you generate a brief from any project file via "From document template", with the fields filled from current project data: sponsor, project manager, duration and budget, starting position, objective, benefit, main risks, deliverables, milestones, and phase and traffic light from the latest status report. "Participants" and "Exclusions" have no counterpart in the project data; the wizard shows these placeholders when generating and lets you fill them in by hand.
Frequently asked questions about the project brief template
01What does the template cost, and do I have to sign up?
Nothing, and no. The files sit directly behind the links, without a form and without an e-mail address.
02What is the difference between a project brief and a project charter?
The project charter is the agreement between sponsor and project manager, one to three pages, signed. The brief is the one-page summary of it, unsigned, for everyone who should know the project. Both are available here as templates with the same sample project.
03Project brief or project one-pager - are they the same?
Yes. One-pager is the English term, Steckbrief the German one; project profile, project sheet and fact sheet mean the same sheet too. In WORKSPACE.PM the function is called one-pager.
04When do I use Word, when PowerPoint?
Word for filing and sending as a document, PowerPoint for presentations and for project overviews where several briefs sit one after another as slides. The fields are the same in both versions.
05How often is the brief updated?
Only when the project changes - budget, end date, scope, project manager. The monthly position belongs in the status report, not in the brief.
06Does the template work in LibreOffice?
The files contain no macros and use only standard Word and PowerPoint features. LibreOffice replaces the Calibri font with Carlito, which has the same character widths, so line and page breaks stay in place. We have tested the template 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.
Generate the brief from project data instead of maintaining it
The sandbox opens a WORKSPACE.PM instance with demo projects, no registration. Open a project's one-pager there and export it as PDF.
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