Project Canvas

Goal

The project canvas is a visual tool that gathers the elements of a project on one page. According to the PMBOK Guide, the canvas lets the team and the stakeholders take in the project at a glance and see how its elements depend on each other. The project manager sees every aspect on one page and spots gaps early. The participants discuss the same page and come away with a common understanding of the project's goals, scope and components.

The canvas prepares two documents. At initiation, it gathers what the project charter will state and the sponsor will sign. At planning, it gives the team a common reference while the team consolidates the plans of each domain into a project management plan. Its deliverable is the completed grid.

Usage

When to use

• Starting a project or a phase: gather on one page what the charter must contain before anyone drafts it.
• Moving into planning: hold the plans of each domain against the same page before consolidating them.
• Complex project: see at once the factors that a series of documents presents one after another.
• Stakeholders from several departments: reach a common understanding of the goals and the scope before each department plans its part.
• Team spread over several sites: fill in the grid on a shared whiteboard during a video call.

When not to use

• Business model under study: the team needs to describe how the organisation does business. Use the Business Model Canvas.
• Justification still open: the blocks would collect opinions. Establish the business case first.

Description

The blocks

Figure 5-15 of the PMBOK Guide gives an example canvas with fifteen blocks. The guide's text names objectives, stakeholders, deliverables, resources, risks and the schedule as typical content. The guide does not fix the list of blocks.

For seven blocks, the figure gives a question that guides the team as it fills them in. The column "What goes in it" repeats the figure's seven questions and supplies the content for the other eight blocks.

The Lessons learned block receives the lessons that other projects recorded at their close with the lessons learned technique.

Where the canvas comes in

The canvas never appears among the outputs of the two processes. It prepares what they produce.

Agreements are an input to initiation. They include any document or exchange that sets out the initial intentions for the project: contract, letter of agreement, purchase order, email. The project management plan that planning produces consolidates the plans of all the performance domains.

According to the guide, each of these processes runs once or at set points in the project life cycle. On entering a new phase, the team therefore returns to the canvas drawn up at initiation.

Filling in the canvas

The PMBOK Guide sets no order, duration or format for filling it in.

Start from the inputs. At initiation, the business case supplies the purpose, the objective and the financial resources. The agreements supply what has been agreed with a customer or a supplier. At planning, the signed charter supplies the starting content of most blocks.

Bring the team and the stakeholders together. Among their tools, both processes list facilitation, meetings, interviews, focus groups and brainstorming. With these techniques, the team fills in the blocks that the input documents leave empty.

Assign the facilitation. A facilitator keeps the time and the order of the blocks. The author of the business case tends to defend their document. Facilitation therefore goes to someone else. The project manager writes notes like the other participants.

Work through the canvas in rounds. The session lasts four hours. The facilitator opens it in a quarter of an hour with the empty grid and the input documents. In 45 minutes, the first round covers the purpose, the objective and the approval requirements. In 45 minutes, the second covers the scope, the exclusions, the assumptions and the constraints. After a 15-minute break, the third covers the resources, the team, the stakeholders and the users in 30 minutes. The fourth covers the milestones, the phases, the risks and the lessons learned in 45 minutes. Reading the canvas as a whole takes the last 45 minutes. In each round, every participant writes one sticky note per item and puts it in the block.

Open a question for an empty or disputed block. The facilitator writes in the block an open question, a date and the name of the person who answers it. The team moves the question to the assumption log or turns it into an action to close before anyone drafts the charter.

Read the canvas as a whole. Reading the canvas as a whole brings gaps and problems to light early. Once the blocks are filled in, the team compares them in pairs. The team settles each contradiction before it carries the content into the charter.

Carry the content into the outputs. On the same day, the facilitator photographs the wall or exports the whiteboard, then transcribes the grid block by block. At initiation, the project manager carries this content over into the project charter. The assumptions and constraints become the first entries in the assumption log. The project keeps the log up to date until it closes. At planning, the team consults the canvas when it consolidates the project management plan.

The canvas, the charter and the Business Model Canvas

The project charter authorises the project. The sponsor signs it. The charter names the project manager and gives them the authority to commit the organisation's resources. The canvas authorises nothing. It has no block for the exit criteria or for the authority of the project manager and the sponsor. A team that drafts its charter from a canvas adds these elements to the charter.

Osterwalder and Pigneur's Business Model Canvas describes in nine blocks how an organisation creates, delivers and captures value. The project canvas describes a project: what it delivers, with which resources, by when. The two share the one-page grid and the practice of filling it in as a group. A project sometimes grows out of a Business Model Canvas when the target model requires a capability that the organisation lacks. The project canvas then describes the project that builds it.

Pitfalls

The first pitfall is the canvas filled in by one person. The project manager fills in the grid at their desk, then presents it. The participants have not discussed its content. No common understanding forms. The project manager brings their proposals on a separate sheet. The people in the room fill in the grid.

The second pitfall is the block filled in without reading the canvas as a whole. Each participant fills in the block they know. Nobody compares the objective with the resources or the deliverables with the exclusions. The contradictions end up in the charter and then in the plans, where they cost more to correct.

The third pitfall is the overflowing block. The Deliverables block receives the work breakdown. The Risks block receives a full register. The page no longer reads at a glance. The detail belongs in the project scope statement, the risk register and the project management plan. The canvas keeps one line per item.

The fourth pitfall is the canvas taken for an authorisation. The team puts up the completed grid and starts spending. Nobody has signed. Nobody has set the project manager's authority. The first trade-off goes up to a sponsor who has approved nothing.

The fifth pitfall is the template adopted unchecked. Not every canvas template circulating online has the blocks of Figure 5-15. The team checks that its own template covers what the charter will require: a measurable objective, approval requirements, resources, team.

AI considerations

A language model prepares the session. From the business case and the agreements, it sorts their content into the blocks: purpose, objective, amounts, named parties. It leaves empty the blocks that the documents do not fill. Yet a nearly complete grid invites the room to approve instead of discussing. The session then loses the common understanding that it was meant to produce. The pre-filled version stays on a separate sheet. The people in the room fill in the grid, then compare it with the sheet.

After the session, the model transcribes the photograph of the wall or the whiteboard export into text sorted by block. It reads handwriting poorly. It sometimes files a note that straddles two blocks in the wrong one. A participant compares the transcription with the photograph.

The model also reads the canvas as a whole. It flags a figure that differs from one block to another, a deliverable with no requirement or a milestone outside every phase. It spots a person named in the approval requirements who is missing from the stakeholders. The team rules on each flag.

The limits lie in the blocks that carry a decision. The approval requirements, each team member's share of time and the treatment of risks commit people who answer for them. A model proposes a plausible value that it has no reason to choose. The grid also contains names, FTE shares and amounts. It goes only to an AI tool that the organisation has authorised.

Examples

A debt enforcement office merges its two sites before the lease on its branch office ends. Each participant has filled in the block they know.

The head of the office wrote 45 employees in the objective. The buildings department wrote 38 workstations in the resources. Each was right within their own block. Reading the canvas as a whole brings out the seven missing workstations before anyone drafts the charter. The session chooses between shared workstations, a revised objective and an additional room. The charter records the session's choice.

Visualisations

The debt enforcement office's canvas shows a completed grid and the gap that appears when the team reads it as a whole. One figure places the canvas among the tools of the two governance processes. Three tables give the blocks, the pairs to compare and the boundary with the charter and the Business Model Canvas.

Cost

Tooling

A wall and sticky notes suit a session in a room. The team draws the grid in marker on a whiteboard or on kraft paper.

A shared whiteboard (Miro, Mural) carries the same grid for a distributed team. Its export becomes the first written version of the canvas.

A one-page document template (word processor, slides, team wiki) holds the clean copy. The team consults it during planning.

Sources

• A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide), 8th edition, Project Management Institute: Section 5 Tools and Techniques, entry "Project canvas" and Figure 5-15 for the definition, the blocks and the effects of the canvas; §2.1.6.1 Initiate Project or Phase and Figure 2-3, §2.1.6.2 Integrate and Align Project Plans and Figure 2-4 for the inputs, tools and outputs of the two processes; Section 4 Inputs and Outputs, entries "Agreements" and "Assumption log".