What Is a RACI Chart? Heres Everything You Need To Know

While RACI is applicable to agile project management, schools of thought vary on whether it is necessary for an agile context. Consulted people provide input and feedback on the work being done in a project. They have a stake in the outcomes of a project because it could affect their current or future work.

Without some sort of mechanism in place, the likelihood something will go very wrong, very fast, will likely occur early on, turning your project into a disaster. Share a product or marketing roadmap, important dates, times and more between Wrike and Google Calendar with Unito’s automated 2-way sync. Project-management.com content and product recommendations are editorially independent.

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TeamGantt makes it easy to build a project plan your whole team can contribute to and collaborate on, with RACI assignments built right in. And because everything happens online, you can stay on top of deadlines and keep up with project progress in real time. Accountable parties are typically on the project team, usually in a leadership or management role.

The same person or department can have different roles in different activities, and the same person may be both responsible and accountable in the same activity. To visualize the overall picture, you may want to use a RACI matrix to show people and activities, and the role each person has in each activity. Now, it is worth noting that there are many flavors of consulting and consulted role. Depending on the organization and project, the consulted role may have more or less power over the outcome of the project. In most cases, however, the consultancy is non-binding, that is the responsible and accountable are not obliged to follow the advice or ensure full verification from consulted people.

Accountable in RACI

Note that this is what happens in all of the columns in the last row of the RACI matrix example. This second responsibility matrix model adopts the positions of those responsible in the first line. Note that it lists only the names of those responsible in the first line, without indicating positions or functions. In a sense, the ideal way is to indicate positions and functions, because the processes are performed by people who are capable of performing each task. In this post you are going to find out what a RACI matrix is, its meaning, how to make a responsibility matrix, plus some accountability matrix examples, to inspire you.

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How to Create a RACI Chart

With many RASCI and RACI charts out there, it can get a bit confusing when differentiating between them. At some point you realize you may need some way to put on paper who is doing what on the project. Not only that but also how much authority they have to make decisions along the project’s life-cycle.

You should now know that the RACI chart is a powerful tool to establish clarity of expectations, remove role confusion, and improve the decision-making process. Here’s a sample RACI chart for a project that involves delivering a slide deck for an upcoming https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ presentation the marketing manager is giving. In this RACI matrix example, we’ve assigned RACI roles to 7 key team members. Also sometimes called a RASIC chart, this RACI alternative adds one extra role into the responsibility assignment mix.

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Clear project roles and responsibilities can help your team move fast and reduce confusion about who’s working on what. With a RACI chart, you can ensure you don’t have two team members working on the same thing. With ProjectManager, you can achieve much more than by only using RACI charts and other static documents. Everyone on the team can keep track of their own tasks and can check them off as completed. Team members can add their own to-do list to the task to manage their work and keep them on track. The RACI template below shows the project tasks in the left column, while the team members are shown in the top row.

• Now, responsible and accountable can be two different people (or departments), but they don’t have to be.
• Starting with column B, label each column header with the name of a team member and/or project role.
• RACI charts are an effective project planning tool that facilitates managing teams’ and stakeholders’ expectations.
• Team members can add their own to-do list to the task to manage their work and keep them on track.
• When this is the case, there is no need to separately mention the “R”.
• But when you make a real model for more than four people, there’s often more white space.

While this role covers anyone who will lend the Responsible person a hand with the work, a Supportive team member isn’t responsible for the outcome. A project manager typically creates a RACI chart to avoid missing those important details and ensure clear communication throughout the project. For example, I know in creating this article that I’m the responsible party, because I’m doing the work of writing. And they likely have consulted and informed others around them, such as a managing editor and an SEO specialist. Responsible designates the task as assigned directly to this person (or group of people). The responsible person is the one who does the work to complete the task or create the deliverable.

Every task has at least one R (Responsible) assigned to it

Let’s go back to the example of the IT team creating a software for the finance department, who is consulted. In addition to this, imagine HR team also must prepare new procedures and training for people joining the finance department, so that they are able to use the new software. Finally, we can move to the last role in the Responsible Accountable Consulted Informed framework. This one is pretty self-explanatory, but we can spend a few words and compare with consulted in particular. Just like the responsible, and even more importantly in this case, we should have one accountable person.

That’s because RACI charts outline the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved, so hammering this out early is crucial for project success. This template from the Academy to Innovate HR is a great choice for project managers who want to organize their team roles with an easy-on-the-eyes chart that evolves beyond the simple spreadsheet. The individual(s) with responsibility for the task or deliverable is typically responsible for developing and completing raci document meaning the project deliverables themselves. The responsible parties are typically hands-on team members that make direct contributions toward the completion of the project. The responsible team is comprised of the project’s “doers”, working hands-on to ensure that each deliverable is completed. If these sentiments are shared in your project team, odds are the entire project effort is struggling because of a lack of clear roles and responsibilities.

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The difference comes with organizations who have decided that more than one “R” for example may be required. It focuses on assigning decision-making responsibilities between different roles, unlike RACI which is purely task-driven. As you can see below the left side of the matrix lists all the tasks involved with the project. The top of each column in the model represents a stakeholder for the project. Supportive – Supportive people are able to provide resources to the Responsible project team members. They are actively involved in working with the Responsible person to see the project through to completion.