RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed. Each letter in the acronym represents a level of task responsibility.
Let’s take a moment to define the 4 responsibilities used in a RACI matrix.
Responsible: This team member does the work to complete the task. Every task needs at least one Responsible party, but it’s okay to assign more.
Accountable: This person delegates work and is the last one to review the task or deliverable before it’s deemed complete. On some tasks, the Responsible party may also serve as the Accountable one. Just be sure you only have one Accountable person assigned to each task or deliverable. (Note: It might not be your PM!)
Consulted: Every deliverable is strengthened by review and consultation from more than one team member. Consulted parties are typically the people who provide input based on either how it will impact their future project work or their domain of expertise on the deliverable itself.
Informed: These team members simply need to be kept in the loop on project progress, rather than roped into the details of every deliverable.
Benefits of a RACI chart
At its core, a RACI matrix helps you set clear expectations about project roles and responsibilities. That way you don’t have multiple people working on the same task or against one another because tasks weren’t clearly defined on the front end.
A RACI matrix also encourages team members to take responsibility for their work—or defer to someone else when needed. Essentially, you’ll remove personal judgment and politics from your process and focus on your team’s ability to act responsibly within a framework you’ve created.
When to use a RACI matrix
A RACI chart serves just about every project well. But it’s especially helpful when tasks require multiple resources, run concurrently, or depend on other tasks.
Here are a few scenarios when a RACI chart comes in handy:
- The decision-making or approval process could hold up the project.
- There’s conflict about task ownership or decision-making.
- The project workload feels like it’s not distributed evenly.
- You experience turnover on a team and need to onboard someone quickly to a new role.
Of course, not all teams and projects are created equally. You might work with a team who just happens to communicate really well and stays on top of their own work. (Lucky you!) Or maybe your project is small enough that it would be silly to take the time to go through this exercise. In cases like these, don’t worry about taking the extra step.
Optimizing RACI chart
In a best case scenario, you’d sit down with your team to walk through the role assignments on each task. But let’s be real: That’s not always possible.
Just be sure everyone represented on your RACI chart has acknowledged and agreed to the roles and responsibilities you’ve laid out. More importantly, you want to check that your matrix eliminates any further project confusion.
These tips can help you get the most out of your RACI chart:
- Focus on project tasks, milestones, and decisions in the RACI matrix. Avoid generic or administrative to-dos like team meetings or status reports.
- Align the tasks in your RACI chart with your project plan so there’s no confusion about details and due dates. (Save time by exporting a CSV file of your project from Team Gantt and copying the task list over to your RACI chart.)
- Keep RACI definitions close by—or even in your doc—because they can be tough to remember sometimes!
- Be sure to assign the proper team members to tasks in Team Gantt. We also recommend adding RACI assignments to the task notes so everyone’s clear about roles and responsibilities.
RACI matrix rules
Once your RACI chart is complete, review it to be sure it follows these simple rules:
- Every task has at least one Responsible person.
- There’s one (and only one!) Accountable party assigned to each task to allow for clear decision-making.
- No team members are overloaded with too many Responsible tasks.
- Every team member has a role on each task. (It’s not uncommon for some folks to be Informed on most tasks.)
- If you have a lot of Consulted and Informed roles on your matrix, make sure you have an easy and lightweight way to keep them informed. It could be as simple as making sure everyone has access to your project plan so they can follow progress along the way. Sharing a view-only link to your project in TeamGantt is a great option for looping in folks outside your organization.