What is a Terms of Reference in Project Management?

6/23/20, 11:03

PMO

What is a Terms of Reference in Project Management?

Published on 16 March 2013 - Revised on

You may have heard of ToR, or Terms of Reference, and wondered how this fits into the project
management process. After all, we have lots of documents already in project management, such as a
project charter (or project initiation document) which seem as if they do a similar thing. For some
projects, a ToR can be very useful and in this article, we will look at why. A ToR is a formal document,
but it is typically not very long. It can be used to describe a project before a full project charter is
produced, or it can be used for a workstream. In my experience, it is more typically used to set out the
terms of reference for a particular workstream or sub-project and is written by the project manager with
input from the functional lead who is managing that section of the work.

You could also produce one for a phase of the project, for example, the initial scoping phase. In short, a
ToR can cover many things but generally sets out the scope of what needs to be done on a particular piece
of work.

The ToR document includes:

Background
The context for the work, the overall aims of the work and any references to other pieces of work that the
team should take into account when commencing the work.

Objectives
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What is this piece of work going to achieve? What problem is it going to solve? These should be set out in
a way that everyone can understand, avoiding jargon.

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Scope
This section briefly covers what is in scope and out of the scope of the work. It is easiest to list this in
bullet point format, as if more detail is required this can be produced in a full requirements document.
Bullet points in this section should cover areas like:

The technical systems involved or that are required

The business processes that will be affected by this work
What hardware and software is required (or specifically out of scope)
Where the project will take place, what locations are affected and what locations will be out of
scope for the purpose of this work
What third parties will be involved
Who will be affected, and which teams or individuals will specifically be out of scope.

You will probably think of other things to include in the scope. A good tip is to bring the team together (if
you don't have a full team together at this point bring together some colleagues) and use a tool like
iMindQ to mindmap some options for the scope. You could include a screenshot of your mindmap in the
document if this is easier to do than listing the scope items as bullet points.

Constraints
This short section documents any project constraints, such as timescales, the available budget, the
resources available or any legislative or regulatory frameworks that have to be considered.

Assumptions
Include any assumptions in the ToR. These are the things that you don't yet know for certain but that will
have an impact on the piece of work later on. If you are updating your ToR later you can update this
section as you may well have been able to ratify your assumptions by then.

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Roles and Responsibilities

Who is on the team? In this section document the names and roles of the people who will be carrying out
the work. You can also include their availability, such as if they are only available to work on the project
two days a week.

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