RACI Chart Tool

Very often in teams, there comes ambiguity in terms of who will be doing what. Team members often complain they were not aware about their role in a given task and that leads to unfinished work and delay. RACI chart tool is one of the most popular and effective tool used for defining roles and responsibilities of various different members in a team in an unambiguous manner. RACI is a responsibility assignment matrix (RAM). This is used for showing who will be doing what in a team.

In RACI tool, ‘R’ stands for “responsible”, ‘A’ stands for “accountable”, ‘C’ stands for ‘consult” and ‘I’ for “inform”. These are the 4 different possible roles assigned to people. The details are as below:

• Responsible: This is a person who performs the task or work and he/she is directly responsible for the work.
• Accountable: Primarily the person who is ultimate in-charge of the task or work
• Consult: Person, who gives clarification, contributes as and when required.
• Inform: Person in charge that needs to know the action or decision has been taken.

An example of RACI chart:

RACI chart tool is primarily used to eliminate any kind of confusion regarding the responsibilities of various members in each of the project tasks. In any task, multiple members will be involved. In the above RACI matrix, each member’s responsibility is clearly mentioned. Once the RACI matrix is prepared and shared with all members, it gives all of them clarity about their role.

RACI tool can be used in any kind of teams.

Application of RACI chart tool

RACI chart tool can be successfully used under the following conditions.

• To provide a clear understanding of the role and responsibilities around the work process of operational activities to all the employees.
• To improve clarity on the understanding of inter departmental and intra departmental responsibilities
• To clearly define the roles and responsibilities of team members working on a project.
• To be used in large team scenarios where each team member may be burdened with lot of responsibilities and chances of confusion is very high.

Creating a RACI Chart Tool

• For each job function identify who will be doing what. Responsibility must be assigned to a single person for any job. Accountability also will be rested with a single person. While there may be multiple persons who may be assigned the roles of “Consult” and “Inform”.
• Review needs to be conducted so that there are no duplicates in the process.

Conclusion

RACI chart tool is a useful and effective decision making too for assigning roles and responsibilities among team members to eliminate ambiguity and inefficiencies.

It helps to resolve any responsibilities related issues that may arise within departments or between individuals.

The main objective of RACI chart tool is to eliminate role confusions and to be able to deliver the product or service successfully to the customer and contribute to the long-term organizational objectives. Check Project Management professional course on KnowledgeHut.