Assign roles effectively within a project using a RACI chart to clarify who is doing the work, who ensures it's done correctly, and who needs to be kept in the loop. Learn how to avoid common pitfalls in responsibility assignment and ensure every task has clear ownership without overcomplicating the process.
Key Insights
- A RACI chart helps define four key roles in task management: Responsible (the doer), Accountable (the overseer), Consulted (the advisor), and Informed (the recipient of updates), with each task always requiring at least one Responsible party.
- Misassigning or omitting roles, such as failing to designate someone as Responsible, can lead to project delays or confusion, highlighting the importance of accurate and necessary role assignment without over-involving team members.
- This training illustrates how RACI charts apply in real scenarios, such as planning a wedding or redesigning a web page, emphasizing that not all tasks require every RACI role and cautioning against assigning unnecessary responsibilities.
This lesson is a preview from our Project Management Course Online. Enroll in a course for detailed lessons, live instructor support, and project-based training.
After creating a work breakdown structure, we have essentially a list of tasks that we need to assign responsibility to. We can do this with a responsibility assignment matrix, which is basically a way of assigning who is going to be responsible for each part of the project. We often do this with a RACI chart.
RACI stands for R, A, C, I. R is for responsibility, A is for accountability, C is for consulted, and I is for informed. So what is the difference between these? I think people often get confused with the R versus the A, responsible versus accountable. Think of the R, the responsible person, as the doer.
So maybe think of this as a DAISY chart, a doer chart. So the responsible person, they're going to be responsible for doing a specific task. Now, an accountable person, think of, let's say, a manager.
Managers might not be the doer. They're not the responsible party. They are the accountable party.
So let's say a manager is accountable for double-checking and verifying that something is being done and is being done correctly. The responsible person was the person responsible for doing the work. So if you don't have somebody kind of double-checking your work, you might not have somebody separately accountable for the work that you're doing.
You could be the responsible person, and you might not have to assign an accountable party for that task. So you always need a responsible person for each task. You may or may not need the other ones, such as accountable.
Consulted would be, does the person responsible for doing that task, do they need to consult with someone? That consulted role is not someone who's going to be doing the task. They're just going to be consulting with the person who is responsible for doing that task. Informed is for somebody that just wants a status update.
They want to know that something was done, that it was completed, or get status updates. So they want to be informed about what's going on, but they are not going to be consulting and answering questions and things. They're not accountable.
You know, they just want to be informed. They want to be told about things. So let's give an example here.
In this case, for a wedding, I'm not sure exactly why there's three people involved in this particular wedding. Maybe one's a sibling or something helping out, but regardless, we have three people, Brian, Sarah, and Luke, and Luke is responsible for creating the guest list. So Luke is doing it with consulting Sarah and Brian.
So Sarah and Brian have a say, Luke is actually creating it. Then, since Luke created it with the help of Sarah and Brian, he is going to be printing those invitations, and Sarah is not really helping him do that, but she is ultimately accountable to make sure that he actually printed those, because if they don't get printed on time, they're not going to be able to be mailed on time, and that will just create problems later on. Then Luke is handing them off to Brian, Brian is going to mail the invitations, and once again, Sarah is going to be accountable to make sure that Brian does that, and since Luke has been involved this whole time, he just wants to be informed that it was indeed mailed.
Now, look at the wait for RSVPs, and look at this and think, what is the problem here with this line? We intentionally kind of made a mistake here. What is that mistake? Pause the video and think about what that mistake is, and once you're done, resume the video. So, what is the mistake that we made here? There is nobody responsible.
You always need someone responsible. So, really, the A should have been responsible, and then Sarah might have just been informed. So, we're not going to keep going through the rest of them, but you always need a responsible person.
The other ones are optional. You don't have to have those, but you might. Don't make up ways to make someone involved in things.
You know, for example, if Brian does not need to be involved in printing the invitations, let's not make more work for people. Let's not force roles to be assigned. Like, oh, I got to fill this out.
I got to give everybody work, because then that person would think that they're going to be involved in that task, when if they don't need to be, let's not give them more work than necessary. So, don't try to assign them all. Only assign what is necessary.
So, as an example here, a little task for yourself to do is think about one of your work-related tasks. Not a whole project, just an individual single task, a single thing that you're doing, and or somebody at your company is doing some project. So, think of one task.
You will need at least one person responsible. You may have somebody accountable. You may have somebody consult.
You may have somebody inform. Think about what that task is, and think about the people that would be there. These could be a specific person, or it could be a certain role.
Pause the video and think about this, and once you're done, resume the video. So, as an example here, our task is to redesign a web page. Who would be responsible for doing that? The designer.
Who is accountable for the designer's work? The art director. Art director is just kind of another term for project manager in many ways. Not always, but many times art directors are kind of project managers.
They have the overall creative vision of what designers are going to be doing, and they are directing the designers. And so, ultimately, if they don't like what the designers do, it is up to them to help that designer create a good design. They are not doing the design, but they are working with designers who are actually doing the design under the direction of the art director.
The consulting role. Maybe that designer is going to talk to marketing. They're going to talk to the front-end developer, the coder, to make sure that things have the correct marketing approach, that what they design can be built, and if not, then they can go back and change things.
So, they want to consult and just make sure that their work is good. Now, for informed, the sales manager is ultimately going to need to be informed about this new design because they're going to be selling from it. Now, they might argue to say, well, we want to be a consultant.
We have ideas. We want to have a say, but maybe they don't have good ideas. Maybe they think they do, but we don't want to listen to those ideas.
So, we're going to put them in the informed part so they know that they are not a consultant. They are not going to be involved in the design. They're just going to be told when everything is said and done.
