Project Charters are Useless (and Why That's Our Fault)

Project charters were supposed to be the north star of every project. So why do they feel like paperwork nobody reads? In this episode, we tear down how charters became bloated, vague, and disconnected from reality — and why that isn’t a tooling problem, a PMO problem, or a leadership problem. It’s a practice problem. We unpack how teams turned a powerful alignment tool into a ceremonial document, what charters were actually meant to do, and how to reclaim them as something that drives decisions instead of gathering dust. If your charter lives in SharePoint and dies in meetings… this one’s for you. Timestamps: 1:36 - What Charters Were Supposed to Do 3:18 - Why Charters Don’t Work in Real Organizations 6:07 - Where the Charter Came From 7:55 - Why Teams Stop Using Them 10:09 - The Charter Became a Lie We Tell Ourselves 11:32 - What a Useful Charter Would Actually Do 14:42 - Why This Would Make PM Life Easier 17:06 - Closing Thoughts