Zoo Relocation Project—Part 1: From CEO Letter to Signed Charter

Series note. This is Part 1 of a six-part Format C case study walkthrough applying the PMBOK lifecycle to the UniSA Zoo Relocation Project, a fictional but instructively-constrained brief used in MPM411. Each article tackles a different lifecycle phase using the same source material.

The Challenge

You have just been appointed Project Manager. Your only briefing is a one-page letter from Carlos Elliott, CEO of the Zoo. The letter is simultaneously generous — you may appoint your own team, you report directly to the board, staged closure is pre-authorised — and terrifying, because every paragraph contains a constraint that would already be a tough project on its own.

Let us audit what the CEO has actually asked for:

Ten implicit requirements buried in roughly 400 words of corporate prose. This is entirely typical — in heavy-engineering and defence environments, a Tier-1 prime receiving a one-page Statement of Need does exactly this kind of forensic decomposition as its first initiation activity.

The PM Framework Applied

PMBOK 6th Edition treats project initiation as a discrete process group containing only two processes: Develop Project Charter (4.1) and Identify Stakeholders (13.1). Done properly, these two transform the CEO's letter into a controlled project.

Step 1: Decompose the brief into SMART objectives

Definition — SMART Objective. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. SMART objectives are auditable; aspirational statements are not.

Strategic Objective — Secure long-term financial viability — through relocation

Financial — ≥ A$20M net profit

Schedule — Operational ≤ 18 months — post-closure

Ethics — Zero casualties — Illustrative proposal: ≥ 95% long-term survival

Human — Illustrative proposal: ≥ 80% staff retention

Sustainability — Illustrative proposal: ≥ 60% asset reuse

Relationship details

From	Relationship	To
Strategic Objective — Secure long-term financial viability — through relocation	leads to	Financial — ≥ A$20M net profit
Strategic Objective — Secure long-term financial viability — through relocation	leads to	Schedule — Operational ≤ 18 months — post-closure
Strategic Objective — Secure long-term financial viability — through relocation	leads to	Ethics — Zero casualties — Illustrative proposal: ≥ 95% long-term survival
Strategic Objective — Secure long-term financial viability — through relocation	leads to	Human — Illustrative proposal: ≥ 80% staff retention
Strategic Objective — Secure long-term financial viability — through relocation	leads to	Sustainability — Illustrative proposal: ≥ 60% asset reuse

Colour coding is deliberate: financial/schedule are business drivers (blue), ethics is a constraint absolute (red), human/sustainability are enabling targets (green). When the inevitable month-9 conflict arises between schedule pressure and animal welfare, the charter has already told you which wins.

Step 2: Log assumptions and constraints explicitly

Assumptions get validated; constraints get managed. Both feed the risk register.

Step 3: Identify stakeholders before drafting authority levels

A first-pass register for the Zoo:

Step 4: Draft the Charter

Project Charter Document

1. Purpose — & Justification

2. Measurable Objectives — & Success Criteria

3. High-Level Requirements

4. Description — & Boundaries

5. High-Level Risks

6. Milestone Schedule

7. Summary Budget

8. Stakeholder List

9. Approval Requirements

10. PM Authority Level

11. Sponsor Authorisation

The most operationally important section is Section 10 — PM Authority Level. This is where the charter answers: can the PM commit funds without board approval below A$X? Terminate sub-contractors? Authorise change requests up to Y% of budget? The CEO letter is silent on every one of these. The charter must not be.

Step 5: Secure formal authorisation

A charter that has not been signed is a draft, not a charter. Authorisation is what transforms the document from a planning artefact into a legal instrument that grants the PM authority to expend organisational resources.

CEO Letter — (Informal)

Decomposition

Stakeholder Identification

Draft Charter

Board Review

Authorised Charter v1.0 — (Formal)

Relationship details

From	Relationship	To
CEO Letter — (Informal)	leads to	Decomposition
Decomposition	leads to	Stakeholder Identification
Stakeholder Identification	leads to	Draft Charter
Draft Charter	leads to	Board Review
Board Review	leads to	Authorised Charter v1.0 — (Formal)

The Result

The PM walks out of the board meeting with three controlled artefacts:

1. Project Charter v1.0 — signed, dated, baselined.
2. Initial Stakeholder Register — a living document.
3. Assumption and Constraint Log — the explicit record of what we believe and what we cannot change.

What the PM does not have, and importantly does not need, is a WBS, schedule, or task-level budget. Those are Phase 2 deliverables.

Core principle. Initiation answers one question: Should this project be authorised, and under whose authority? It does not exist to plan the work.

The Pitfalls

• Treating the letter as the charter. The letter is input, not output.
• Quantifying objectives the sponsor did not quantify. Proposed numbers must be negotiated with the sponsor before being baselined.
• Identifying only friendly stakeholders. The important early identifications are parties with power to say no.
• Drafting authority levels in the abstract. Specify dollar limits and decision categories concretely.
• Skipping the assumption log. Assumptions feel like padding until one fails.
• Forgetting that initiation has its own budget. Decomposition and consultation consume real resources before any deliverable is produced.

Knowledge Check

1. The 18-month operational deadline and the "retain existing enclosures where possible" instruction are in tension. Which takes precedence in the charter, and how would you justify this to the board?
2. You discover the environment regulator will require a 90-day public consultation on the new site's transport route. Does this belong in the charter, the assumption log, or the risk register?
3. Draft a one-sentence PM authority statement that gives decisive authority but preserves board control over commitments above A$500,000.

Key Takeaways

• The CEO letter is input to initiation, not the output. The charter converts qualitative language into quantified, auditable objectives.
• Charter development and stakeholder identification are paired — neither can be completed in isolation.
• Constraints, assumptions, and objectives must be logged separately because they generate different downstream responses.
• The charter's most operationally important section is the PM authority level.
• A charter is not a charter until signed, baselined, and version-controlled.

References

• Project Management Institute 2017, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), 6th edn, PMI, Newtown Square, PA.
• Burke, R 2013, Project Management: Planning and Control Techniques, 5th edn, Wiley, Chichester.
• Kerzner, H 2017, Project Management: A Systems Approach, 12th edn, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ.
• Turner, JR 2014, Handbook of Project-Based Management, 4th edn, McGraw-Hill, New York.
• University of South Australia 2015, MPM411 Zoo Relocation Project Brief, UniSA, Adelaide.