program-charter

What it does and when to use it

Turn a fuzzy cross-team mandate into a chartered program — a measurable outcome, a named sponsor, explicit in/out-of-scope boundaries, the teams on the hook, and the starting RAID. Use at the very start, before any planning, whenever a multi-team effort lacks a clear outcome or owner.

How it works

1. When to use
2. Procedure
3. Output
4. Anti-patterns (the hook flags these in artifacts)

---
name: program-charter
description: "Turn a fuzzy cross-team mandate into a chartered program — a measurable outcome, a named sponsor, explicit in/out-of-scope boundaries, the teams on the hook, and the starting RAID. Use at the very start, before any planning, whenever a multi-team effort lacks a clear outcome or owner."
---

# Skill: Program charter

Charter a program before planning it. A program without a measurable outcome and a
named sponsor is a request, not a program — and it cannot be declared done.

## When to use

- A multi-team effort has been handed down but the outcome is fuzzy.
- Several teams share a deadline but no one owns the joint result.
- A program is in flight but nobody can state, in one sentence, what "done" means.

First confirm this is actually a program (tree 1 in
[`../../knowledge/tpm-engagement-decision-trees.md`](../../knowledge/tpm-engagement-decision-trees.md)).
If the hard part isn't cross-team seams, route to `project-management`.

## Procedure

1. **Write the outcome as one measurable sentence.** Metric + target + date. If you
   can't measure it, you can't close it. Push back on "improve X" until it's
   "move metric M from A to B by date D."
2. **Name the single sponsor.** One accountable executive who funds tradeoffs and
   breaks ties. Two sponsors is zero sponsors.
3. **Draw the scope boundary — out-of-scope first.** The out list is what protects
   the date; make it explicit and get the sponsor to agree it.
4. **List the teams and each team's one deliverable** into the program.
5. **Seed the RAID** with the known risks, assumptions, issues, and the obvious
   cross-team dependencies.
6. **Fill the [`program-charter`](../../templates/program-charter.md) template** and
   get the sponsor's explicit sign-off before any planning starts.

## Output

A completed charter. The outcome sentence is the contract; everything downstream
(plan, RAID, status, go/no-go) is judged against it.

## Anti-patterns (the hook flags these in artifacts)

- A charter with no measurable outcome ("improve billing").
- A charter with no named sponsor, or two co-sponsors.
- A scope section with an in-list but no out-list.

Versions

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