TOPIC: "Project Charter" Not Classified in PMBOK Guide.

To what species of documents does Project Charter belong?

Project Charter is not clearly listed as external/internal/business/project document. It may be inferred; but then, different people will infer different things.

Table 1-2 (PMBOK Guide, 6th ed., page 559) lists 18 documents as components of the Project Management Plan and 33 documents as Project Documents.
The only two examples for business documents, repeated over and over, are Business Case and Benefits Management Plan, which are used as inputs to developing the project charter.

We know that the document is written (may be among others) by the project sponsor and the project manager, who will be named in that very document. Who came first - hen or egg... people have discussed these things years ago, and this is not my topic. The sponsor writing it before the project is approved would point to it being an EXTERNAL DOCUMENT. However, it is listed as the first process in the Initiating Process Group, which would make it a PROJECT DOCUMENT.

To what species of documents does Project Charter belong?

Any information would be appreciated. Please include references such as page numbers.

Thanks,
Al

Interesting question.
The Project Charter is a formal record of a project. The inputs are Business Documents, Agreements, EEFs, and POAs. The result of these documents, of which many may be external, creates a new document, The Charter, but the charter is a document that is essentially locked; it should not be changed.
The Charter is also sometimes considered redundant to the Scope, but at a higher level.
A Business Case could have been a project by itself, which would have had some kind of Charter too.
Throughout the PMBOK, The Charter is described as documenting something. It is a direct result of a specific process.
Further, Project Documents have a tendency to get changed, whereas a Charter would not, and thus probably should not specifically be listed as a project document. In my opinion, The Charter is a locked project Document, it is used as a project document, but does not get updated or changed. I think that is the big difference.