Should we use a standard project charter template or customize it?

[StevenTS]

I’m trying to decide if we should use a standard project charter template for our new initiatives or keep building custom ones from scratch each time. The ready-made ones seem efficient, but I worry they might miss something specific to our workflow that we’d normally catch when we build our own.

[MarkRJ]

We tried a ready made template and it did shave off setup time, but we kept bumping into our own terms for responsibilities and decision gates. It felt like we spent more time bending it than thinking through the initiative.

[Alexander18]

Going custom from scratch was slower, but we got exactly the fields we needed for governance. We even built a small appendix for our team huddle cadence and a tight change log, which we later pruned.

[EricHG]

Are we sure the issue is the format itself or is the real bottleneck our process and how we review it?

[GraceT]

We ended up mixing: start with a standard template, then drop in a short custom notes section and a one page crib sheet for unique steps. It helped keep momentum without freezing in edits.