This document represents the agreement between the IT staff and the business sponsor about the definition, scope, constraints, and schedule of the BI project. It also serves as the baseline for all change requests . A project charter contains the following sections:
- Goals and objectives (both strategic goals for the organization and specific objectives for the BI project)
- Statement of the business problem
- Proposed BI solution
- Results from the cost-benefit analysis
- Results from the infrastructure gap analysis (technical and nontechnical)
- Functional project deliverables ( reports , queries, Web portal)
- Historical requirements (how many years of history to store)
- Subject area to be delivered
- Entities (objects), significant attributes, relationships (high-level logical data model)
- Items not within the project scope (originally requested but subsequently excluded from the scope)
- Condition of source files and databases
- Availability and security requirements
- Access tool requirements
- Roles and responsibilities
- Team structure for core team and extended team members
- Communication plan
- Assumptions
- Constraints
- Risk assessment
- Critical success factors
Project plan
A project plan may contain multiple graphs (such as a CPM chart, a Pert chart, or a Gantt chart) detailing task estimates, task dependencies, and resource dependencies. Most project-planning tools can also produce additional tabular reports on resources and schedule.