18.3 Team charter and work plan

A suitable project charter would identify a project coordinator, data lead, analytical lead, secondary-research lead, and communication lead. These are areas of responsibility, not isolated silos. Every major result should receive a technical review and a communication review by someone other than its original author.

The team would agree to:

• keep raw data unchanged and perform cleaning through reproducible scripts;
• record variable definitions and analytical decisions in shared files;
• use one approved project repository;
• identify the owner and reviewer of every deliverable;
• document unresolved questions and decisions after each meeting;
• escalate confidentiality, access, or scope concerns rather than resolving them informally; and
• integrate sections throughout the project instead of combining independent reports at the end.

A twelve-week plan could allocate two weeks to framing, access, and documentation; three weeks to EDA and secondary evidence; three weeks to modelling and projections; two weeks to recommendations and validation; and two weeks to integration, revision, presentation practice, and handoff. Review time is included within every phase.