Phase 0 — Project Vision & Charter

| | | |--|--| | **Phase** | 0 | | **Primary path** | `docs/internal/charter/` |

Phase 0 — Project Vision & Charter

Purpose

Answer why this exists before requirements harden: problem, audience, success metrics, scope boundaries.

Ownership

Product Owner / sponsor primary; Tech Lead reviews; formal sign-off before Phase 1.

Write

• Vision statement (2–4 working sentences, not a slogan)
• KPIs with baseline and target
• In-scope and out-of-scope
• Stakeholders + RACI
• Constraints and assumptions (assumptions are risks until validated)
• Initial risk register

Split across scaffold files using the charter table in appendix/phase-folder-map.md.

RACI example

# docs/internal/charter/stakeholders.md

| Activity | Product Owner | Tech Lead | Eng Team | Security | Sponsor |
|----------|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|
| Define vision | A | R | C | - | C |
| Approve scope | R | C | I | C | A |
| Write KPIs | A | R | C | - | C |
| Risk decisions | C | R | C | A | I |
| Sign off charter | I | C | I | C | A |

(R = responsible, A = accountable, C = consulted, I = informed; single-A per row.)

Risk register example

# docs/internal/charter/risk-register.md

| # | Risk | Likelihood | Impact | Mitigation | Owner |
|---|------|:---:|:---:|------------|-------|
| 1 | Export of >1M rows exceeds default timeout | Medium | High | Document configurable `WORKER_COUNT` env var; set a reasonable default |
| 2 | Tenant billing data contains PII not covered by current retention policy | Low | Critical | Add PII field annotation spec before Phase 1; security review gate in Phase 3 DoD |
| 3 | New format (Parquet) requires dependency the team hasn't used | Medium | Medium | Spike in Phase 2; include in module spec as risk mitigator |
| 4 | API rate limits not communicated to users before launch | High | Medium | Include in user getting-started; smoke-test with a new tenant before GA |
| 5 | Single region deployment without DR plan | Low | Critical | Add DR doc to Phase 6 scope; reference in architecture constraints |

Likelihood: Low/Medium/High. Impact: Low/Medium/High/Critical. Revisit at each phase gate.

Bad → good (vision)

Definition of Done (MVP)

• Vision approved by sponsor
• KPIs measurable
• Out-of-scope listed
• RACI agreed
• Committed under docs/internal/charter/

Mistakes

• Marketing pitch instead of team working definition
• Skipping out-of-scope
• Never revisiting the charter at milestones

Check yourself

1. Your team lead says “we’ll do the vision in a kick-off slide deck — not in a doc.” What’s the risk?
2. Which of these is a measurable KPI: “improve customer success” vs “cut export-related support tickets 60% within 3 months”?
3. You wrote a vision statement that your sponsor loves. Six months later, a new engineer asks “why does this exist.” Where do they look?

Use

• Template: templates/vision-charter.md
• Example: examples/acme-export-platform/internal/charter/vision.md

Phase folder map · Learning path