RACI: Identifying Roles and Responsibilities Within a Task

RACI is a key project management tool used to identify roles and responsibilities within a project. This helps avoid any confusion along the way, knowing who has ownership of the project, what roles everyone takes, and who makes the final decisions.

Everyone should know their level of responsibility within a task/project. Without clearly defining roles and responsibilities, projects can easily run into problems.

Delegation is an important part of a project manager's role. Using the model can help set expectations for the project from the outset. RACI matrix can help set these roles and expectations.

What is RACI?

RACI is an acronym that stands for responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed.

• Responsible:  Who has the responsibility of getting the task done or making the decisions for the project?  
• Accountable: Who is accountable for the successful completion of the work, making sure everything is done to the best possible standard, approves work, and total completion of the final task. Who is  the“owner”?
• Consulted:  The go-to person to consult on the project. Who has the core necessary information for the project and key person to  communicate with? This can be several people, often experts in their individual field.
• Informed: Who needs to be kept informed and up-to-date with progress reports of the task? Who plays an active role in the process?

Clarification helps optimise the project for greater efficiency.

Variations on RACI Matrix Models

Occasionally roles don’t fit into the standard matrix model.

For example, each task needs a responsible and accountable person allocated, but it may be necessary to consult or verify work so there are other alternative models. Project Management Institute (PMI) have other models

DACI: Driver, Approver, Contributor, Informed
RAPID: Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, Decide.
ARCI: Accountable, Responsible, Consulted, Informed
RASCI: Responsible, Accountable, Supportive, Consulted, Informed
RSI: Responsible, sponsored and informed.
RASCI: The 'S' stands for 'Support' who will be assisting the responsible person to perform the task.
RACIO: The 'O' stand for  'Omitted' people who don't take an active role within the project.
RACI-VS: The 'V' stands for 'Verify' and  'S' for 'Signatory' reviewing a task to ensure it has been done and completed properly.

Assignment of Tasks

Knowing who is responsible for each task. Each task must have both a responsible and accountable person assigned. Tasks with multiple “responsible” can slow down the process. Only assign the necessary people to avoid inefficiencies when you get a “too many cooks in the kitchen” scenario.

It also stops the blame game and offers true accountability because if work is not completed it is very clear who is responsible and who is letting others down. 

Checkify works along with the same principles of knowing who is responsible, tracking accountability while knowing who is part of that chain of the workflow. Keeping everyone informed at each step along the way.

Allowing you to assign each task to the best person to do that task along with an audit trail to identify where things have gone wrong.

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