Project Charter

1. Project Charter Producing Collaborative Documents

2. Project Charter • This PowerPoint covers the following: • Requirements of Project Charter • Writing as a Group • Professional Standards • Concise Writing

3. Project Charter • This projects asks students to work in groups in preparing one proposal for a service learning project • Students must draw from each other’s design notebooks in forming one idea and proposal

4. Group Brainstorming • Treat brainstorming for the project charter as a negotiation • Look for an overlap between observations and ideas • Draw on the specific expertise of each member • Make sure everyone’s voice is heard • If the group decides to do something else, get over it • Choose what is best for the client

5. Group Writing Strategies • Write everything together • This ensures consistency • This can be difficult with large groups • Divide-up into sections • This ensures that everyone gets a voice and is easier with big groups • Can produce uneven documents

6. Group Writing Guidelines • Don’t make one person write the entire thing • Devise a game plan before writing the charter • Create an outline for the document • Develop standards that every member must meet in composing

7. Group Writing Standards • Create standards that address: • Contractions • First and second person • Terminology • Length • Paragraph style • Citation style • Transitions • Headings and subheadings • Graphics and images • Fonts

8. Group Revision • Everyone should participate • Check every standard to ensure compliance • Consider the relative weight of each section • Think about transitions between each section • Read the entire document out loud to check for shifts in voice and tone

9. Professional Standards • Remember that this project is a professional relationship with a client more than it is a class project • Uphold professional standards throughout all interactions with clients, including writing the project charter

10. Professional Standards • Professional Standards include: • Voice • Audience Consideration • Document Appearance • Timeliness • Clarity and Conciseness • Specificity • Professional Appearance and Interaction

11. Professional Ethos • Speak with a professional voice that uses the terminology and style of the client • Address and value the concerns and needs of the client • Provide relevant and reliable evidence to support your conclusions • Make sure your document design meets the standards of the field you are writing for

12. Concise Writing • The goal of concise writing is to use the most effective words. • Concise writing does not always have the fewest words, but it always uses the strongest ones. • Writers often fill sentences with weak or unnecessary words that can be deleted or replaced. • Words and phrases should be deliberately chosen for the work they are doing.

13. Concise Writing • Replace several vague words with more powerful and specific words • Wordy: Our website has made available many of the things you can use for making a decision on the best dentist. (20 words) • Concise: Our website presents criteria for determining the best dentist. (9 words)

14. Concise Writing • Interrogate every word in a sentence • Wordy: The teacher demonstrated some of the various ways and methods for cutting words from my essay that I had written for class. (22 words) • Concise: The teacher demonstrated methods for cutting words from my essay. (10 words)

15. Concise Writing • Combine Sentences • Wordy: Ludwig's castles are an astounding marriage of beauty and madness. By his death, he had commissioned three castles. (18 words) • Concise: Ludwig's three castles are an astounding marriage of beauty and madness. (11 words)

16. Exercise • Revise the following bit of text. • The first group to “successfully” revise it down to 125 clear and concise words wins.

17. The End