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AI Centre of Excellence charter

Template id: coe-charter

Responsible skill: ai-centre-of-excellence:coe-charter. The cadence section is completed with ai-centre-of-excellence:coe-cadence, and the structure and launch roadmap sections with ai-centre-of-excellence:coe-operating-model.

How to use this template: complete every section in your own words. Replace each [To confirm: ...] marker only with a fact your organisation has agreed. Use roles, never personal names. For a Starter organisation, complete the sections marked "Starter" as the terms of reference for an AI working group and leave the rest out.

1. Document control

2. Purpose (Starter)

One sentence a department head would recognise.

[To confirm: purpose statement, for example "Help every department use AI safely to improve outcomes it already owns."]

3. Outcomes the CoE serves (Starter)

4. Who owns what (Starter)

5. Scope across the six pillars

Govern once, repeat everywhere: a control or pattern agreed in one pillar for one team is reused by the next.

6. Principles and what they mean here (Starter)

7. Sponsorship (Starter)

The sponsor is an active decision maker, not a recipient of reports. Tick what the sponsor has agreed to do.

8. Decision rights

Mark each row with the deciding role: [To confirm].

9. Interfaces with existing forums

10. What the CoE is and is not (Starter)

The CoE is:

• a business transformation capability, owned by the business unit that benefits;
• a structured delivery function with one backlog;
• a governance framework applied in proportion to risk;
• the home of opportunity management and knowledge management;
• the place where value and return are measured against baselines.

The CoE is not:

• an IT project: the business owns priorities, knowledge, adoption and benefits;
• a monthly reporting group: forums exist to take decisions;
• a technology experiment: work starts from a business outcome;
• a queue of requests for the central AI team: ideas arrive with an owner and a framed problem; the CoE provides method, assurance and patterns.

11. Structure and membership (Starter)

Sizes are typical starting points; record real time, not aspirations.

12. Cadence and terms of reference

Completed with ai-centre-of-excellence:coe-cadence. One column per forum. Lengths and frequencies shown are typical starting points; a Starter working group may merge the first two columns.

Standing agendas:

• Working group: new opportunities; delivery updates by exception; risks; knowledge gaps.
• Steering committee: return achieved against baseline; priority decisions; funding requests; new opportunities above delegated limits; escalations.
• Strategy review: roadmap; adoption; value delivered; future priorities.

Decision log

13. Collaboration space

Completed with ai-centre-of-excellence:coe-operating-model. Use tools the organisation already runs.

14. Launch roadmap

Completed with ai-centre-of-excellence:coe-operating-model. Timings are typical; move on when exit items are met.

15. Launch commitments (Starter)

Commitment principle: the goal is not to build AI; it is to build business capability supported by AI and automation.

16. Changing this charter

[To confirm: who may propose changes, which forum agrees them, and how often the charter is reviewed.]

17. Sign-off

Credit: Template from CopilotForge by Simon Foote (https://github.com/SimonFoote-greensparx/CopilotForge), licensed under CC BY 4.0. Keep this credit when you share or adapt the template; in your own completed document you may keep it as a footer or remove it.

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