RACI Made Simple. How To Create A Responsibility Assignment Matrix That Actually Works

You hear the term RACI, and inwardly groan. Far from the slightly exciting sounding acronym, it can often become a bit of a beast to create, with headaches caused by trying to work out who should be given which role for every task or deliverable.

The RACI chart (also known as RACI matrix or diagram) should be there to make your life easier as a Project Manager, but can be the elephant in the room at the beginning of the project, that no one wants to complete or review, or even then use. So how can you make your RACI a useful tool that can help you, and your project?

In this article I’m going to help simplify the RACI process by showing you how to use RACI charts in the best and most effective way, giving tips on how to avoid the common problems, and providing a free RACI matrix template to use on your project.

Firstly, What Is A RACI Chart?

Put simply, it’s a tool that identifies roles and responsibilities against tasks within a project.

What does RACI stand for?

• Responsible
• Accountable
• Consulted
• Informed

The RACI maps tasks and deliverables against roles on your project, and decision making and responsibilities are allocated to each role using the above terms. So let’s look a little further at what each of these terms mean.

Responsible: Doing The Task

This person actions the task or deliverable. They are responsible for getting the work done or making the decision. It can sometimes be more than one person, but try to minimise the amount of people involved.

Accountable: Owning The Task

This person or role is responsible for the overall completion of the task or deliverable. They won’t get the work done, but are responsible for making sure it’s finalised. Ideally, this should be one person rather than a group to avoid confusion in terms of who actually owns the task.

Consulted: Assisting

This person, role or group will provide information useful to completing the task or deliverable. There will be two-way communication between those responsible and those consulted.

Informed: Keeping Aware

These people or groups will be kept up to date on the task or deliverable. This could be on progress, or when the task or deliverable is completed. They won’t be asked to feedback or review, but they can be affected by the outcome of the task or deliverable. There should be one-way communication to these roles or groups.

Why Should I Care? The Advantages Of A RACI Chart

1. Streamlining Communication

Having a RACI in place can be useful to refer back to throughout the life of a project. Rather than involving every single person in every single decision, you can streamline the communication, involve the right people at the right time and speed up sign-offs and decision making.

2. Avoiding People Overload

You know what it’s like when you get opinions from everyone and it becomes a nightmare trying to incorporate everyone’s point of view? Yep, this is where a RACI can be useful. The great thing about having the distinction between Consulted and Informed is that you can separate those involved in feedback, and those that are only updated on progress on the task.

3. Avoiding Work Overload And Silos

We all know how often a Project Manager wears many hats, taking on a lot of responsibility and often covering multiple roles on a project. The RACI chart can be a useful tool to help delegate, and avoid Project Manager burn-out. It also helps mitigate having a single point of failure, where all knowledge and responsibility for a task rests on one person, therefore creating silos.

4. Setting Clear Expectations

You can create a lot of efficiencies using a RACI chart on your project. When you create a RACI at the beginning of a project, it can be useful to help set expectations for who is managing or responsible for work going forward. People involved in the project should be able to clearly see where they need to be involved, and with which tasks. It can also help eliminate confusion by knowing who is ultimately accountable for a task completion. It’s particularly useful to set expectations with more senior stakeholders who are informed on the project: it will allow them to know what information they will receive as part of the project.

When Should I Use A RACI Chart?

Is a RACI chart useful across all projects? The short answer is no. Throwing in too much complexity and process to some small and fast-moving projects can actually slow things down and create blockers. So if your project team is small, roles are already very clearly defined, or a similar structure has been used successfully previously, then consider just assigning tasks to people. You don’t necessarily need to define everyone’s involvement in every deliverable.

However, on larger projects with multiple stakeholders, not using a RACI and clearly defining responsibility upfront can lead to difficulties further down the line, when people ask why they weren’t involved, or you find out there’s another layer of approval needed. It’s a great way to help avoid unexpected surprises and too much involvement from stakeholders along the course of the project, slowing down decisions and work, and the project as a whole. Primarily, if there is any confusion or questions around who is doing or involved in what, use a RACI to agree roles and responsibilities upfront.

Should I Use A RACI On Agile Projects?

The Scrum Alliance published an article which had an interesting addition to the RACI chart to account for the differences in Scrum, the RACI + F. Unfortunately, the article is no longer online but you can find a summary of it here. F stands for Facilitate, so this chart uses the standard RACI plus this extra role for someone who facilitates or coaches. The article argues that adding this role then accounts for how Scrum is run, and roles can be delegated accordingly.

However, this Facilitator role seems best assigned to the ScrumMaster or Project Manager on the project therefore this just adds another layer of additional information to the chart. I’m also a firm believer in keeping the RACI as simple as possible, and adding another role into the mix doesn’t do this.

Use The RACI Wisely On Agile Projects

Another way to look at Agile projects and the RACI chart is that there is already a clear allocation of responsibility and accountability: Responsible being the team working on the product, and Accountable being the Product Owner. Then you just need to identify contributors and those you share information with. A lot of the principles of Agile empower close and regular communication with the team, so the people that need to be consulted are there and don’t necessarily need to be told that they are a contributor. It’s therefore not the case that every Agile project should use the RACI chart. A lot of the roles are implicit if you are following an Agile methodology, such as Scrum. Assess your needs before going ahead with a RACI — remember, they are not necessary for every project.

Read the full article to learn more:
- A step-by-step- guide on how to create a RACI Chart
- Common RACI Pitfalls And How To Avoid Them
- What Are The Alternatives To A RACI
- RACI Matrix Template
- A RACI Case Study

Originally published at www.thedigitalprojectmanager.com on May 1, 2018.