This complete guide explains what is a RACI Model for assigning responsibilities to the stakeholders and how monday.com can be used to make the RACI model work for any business:
In this article, we will understand the meaning of the RACI model, its benefits, steps involved in making a RACI matrix, rules while making a matrix, important guidelines, and tips, pros & cons, describing its various alternatives.
We will also explain how monday.com can make the RACI model work for any business.
RACI model is defined as the process of assigning responsibilities to the stakeholders or persons involved in the task. In other words, it is the process of defining who is doing what.
What You Will Learn:
Understanding RACI Model
RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. It is the acronym that describes the roles needed to share team responsibilities for the completion of any task or procedure.
The projects can be managed by implementing them through assigning roles to the persons or stakeholders involved and coding every role with color by creating a simple table layout.
Definitions:
- Responsibility (Doing the task): In this role, the person who is working (that can be a worker or a team member or a manager or group of people) has been given the responsibility of completing the task. There can be many people who are responsible for the completion of the task. There is no limit to that.
- Accountability (Owning the task): This is the person who reviews the task and delegates the work for its completion stage. Or in other words, this person is the last one in the completion of work and signs off after completion. There must be one accountable person per task. The limit is one only.
- Consulted (Assisting): These are the persons who give their expertise for the betterment of any task. This person helps in taking decisions by providing their inputs on the task. They are not directly involved in the completion of any project. They are just there for consultation due to their subject matter expertise. There can be more than one consulted person on a task. There is no limit to that.
- Informed (Keeping aware): This is the person to be informed after the successful completion of the task. This person needs to be in the loop in the procedure to inform the completion of the task. There is no maximum or a minimum number of informed people in the task. They can be more than one in a single task.
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How To Buid RACI Matrix
RACI Matrix is a Responsibility Assignment Matrix wherein every person related to the project or task has been assigned some role and accordingly, the project commenced.
The roles included in RACI Matrix are:
- Responsible
- Accountable
- Consulted
- Informed
For the RACI Matrix, we need to form a table with rows containing Tasks, Activities, or Deliverables and the column contains the names of persons. Now, under each person, their role is assigned. Each person should be assigned only one role.
Every person has assigned roles marked with different colors and in every activity or deliverable, each person has different responsibilities or roles. In this way, projects can be managed efficiently, and every person is responsible for their roles.
Benefits Of Using RACI matrix
These include:
- Streamlining communication: It helps in streamlining communication, which means the right person is assigned to the right place and involves the right people at the right time. To make decisions, the required person can only be connected.
- Avoid work overload: It helps in dividing work among the persons through assigning different roles. Therefore, the work overload on the shoulders of a manager can be avoided.
- Avoid people overload: It helps to avoid overloaded opinions of people at each level of the project life cycle as the responsibilities and roles are assigned at the very beginning of the task or project.
- Setting expectations: It helps in setting expectations through assigning tasks at the beginning of the task so the persons involved don’t get confused and know their responsibilities and expectations from them.
- Keeps project on track: RACI helps in making the project in a frame that means it provides the framework for project management so as it keeps on track.
- Smooth transitions and handoffs: It facilitates smooth transition and handoff of the task or the stage by clearly defining who is responsible for what. This helps the related persons not get confused and know their limits.
- Workload analysis: It helps in analyzing workload on individuals and departments. It provides a framework where every individual has assigned their role and anyone with more than 1 role can be easily identified.
- Conflict resolution: It provides clear roles and responsibilities to the persons involved. This helps them to not get confused and have a clear idea of their limits. This avoids conflicts related to the responsibilities. Everyone knows what they need to do.
- Project management: The first and foremost benefit of this model is to manage the project efficiently by assigning roles and responsibilities to the persons and groups involved and making a framework to get them on track.
- Documents the status quo: It provides a framework wherein the roles and responsibilities can be effectively organized and documented for future references.
Steps To Create RACI matrix
Step 1: List project tasks: This is the first step to making the matrix. Here you need to list the project tasks or deliverables in the rows in the matrix table.
Step 2: Outline project roles: Now, after listing the tasks, you need to outline project roles, i.e., Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. The roles can be different as per the requirement of the organization. These are the very common roles generally adopted by project management.
Step 3: Assign RACI responsibilities: After outlining or deciding the roles, assign them to the respective persons. Every person should be given one role.
Step 4: Finalize and approve: After assigning the right roles to the right persons you need to analyze there should not be an overload of work on anyone and then approve it.
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Using RACI Project Management: Tips And Guidelines
These are enlisted below:
- Focus on tasks and milestones: It is more important to focus on completing the milestones and tasks rather than wasting time on team meetings or reporting.
- Align the tasks as per your project plan: Always align your tasks or deliverables under the project plan. The task that should be done foremost should be at first place and so on.
- Study RACI definitions: Before using this model, the user must clarify his understanding of the roles. As it is very important to assign the right role to the right person and it’s tough to remember the definitions sometimes.
- List project tasks thoroughly before using RACI: It is very essential to list the task in the correct order. Your Work Breakdown Structure must be accurate. You should take the help of consultants or subject matter experts for this.
- Give responsibility to lower-level workers or staff or employees: You should not be afraid to give responsibility to complete the task or to be accountable for the task to the lower-level staff (say, senior developer).
- Standardize the approach: Across departments standardize this approach. Let everyone on the same board from executive to intern maximize the ROI.
- Use right digital tools: For efficient management and implementation of RACI, proper digital infrastructure is needed.
RACI Matrix Rules
- 1 responsible per task: There must be at least one responsible person per task. There can be an unlimited number of responsible persons per task, as these are the persons who do the actual task.
- Only 1 accountable per task: The Accountable must be 1 person per task. If there is over one accountable person in a task, there would be conflict among them on delegation of authority.
- No overload of responsibility: The responsibilities should not be overloaded. That means team members should not be overloaded with many responsibilities on a single task.
- Assign the task to each member: Task must be assigned to each and every member of the team to let them know and understand what they need to do and for what they would be responsible for.
- Ease communication with C and I: There should be an easy and efficient way to communicate with Consulted and Informed persons. They must be in the loop to know the progress of the task.
- Accountable should delegate the task: To delegate or to help finish the task should be in the hands of or be the responsibility of the accountable only.
- Only Responsible and Accountable roles are mandatory: In any RACI matrix of project management, two roles are mandatory, the Responsible and the Accountable. Other roles are secondary.
- Keep all members informed and updated: Each and every member of the team, whether he is a worker or a senior executive, must be informed about the changes in the project.
Pros And Cons
Pros:
- It facilitates the elimination of the overload of work and people. This means the team members would not be overloaded with responsibilities and there would not be extra people at any stage or role. Only the required number of people will be placed in a certain role.
- It eliminates the confusion of roles within the minds of team members. Everyone gets to know their roles and responsibilities clearly and they are bound to do their respective task.
- It helps in effective communication throughout the organization and helps in decide efficiently.
- It helps in avoiding conflicts that can be occurred if the roles and responsibilities are not clearly defined. As everyone would give their suggestions in decision making or would not accept their mistakes if the roles are not clearly defined.
Cons:
- It is not suitable for every business like small scale business, single departmental projects, and more.
- It involves a time-consuming complex process to create a matrix and any mistake in creation can build uncertainty in the whole process.
Alternatives Of RACI
- RASCI: It stands for Responsible Accountable Supportive Consulted and Informed. Here one party is added, i.e., the Supportive. It is the person who supports the responsible parties. RASCI works the same way as the RACI Model by adding one role extra. In some tasks or projects, the Supportive is needed. So for this, we have the RASCI Model.
- CARS: It stands for Communicate Approve Responsible and Support. Here, in this model, roles are different as compared to the RACI Model, but it follows the same matrix. Communicating includes the persons to be consulted and informed. Approve is the person who is a decision-maker. Responsible is the person who does the work. It may be a group of people as well. Support is the person who helps the responsible person in doing their task.
- RAS: It stands for Responsible Approve and Support. This model is a simplified version of the CARS model. Here, the Communicate person is removed to make the process simpler. The Communicate that includes Consulted and Informed persons are accounted for later in the project in some other way.
- DACI: It includes roles like- Drivers, Approvers, Contributors, and Informed. Drivers are the persons who do the work or who do the task. Approvers are the persons who decide. Contributors do the consultant work for the project. Informed includes the person who is being informed of the completion of the task. This model is the same as the RACI model, just the designation is changed from Responsible to Drivers, Accountable to Approvers, Consulted to Contributors.
- CLAM: This is the acronym for Contribute Lead Approve and Monitor. In this model, the roles are a bit different as compared to the RACI model. Here Contribute include persons who do the work and the persons who are consulted. The lead includes persons who manage the task and delegate work. Approve includes the decision-makers. And Monitor includes the persons who need to keep in the loop for project management.
monday.com With RACI Model
Let us see how monday.com can make the RACI model work for any business:
#1) RACI Matrix template
monday.com provides the RACI ready-made template to kick-start the procedure. In this template, you have been given the rows containing phases of the project (say phase 1 or phase 2) within which you can add tasks or deliverables.
The columns contain roles for the task, the status of the task, and more. You can also customize it as per your requirements and standardize it for the whole department.
#2) Board permissions for updating
monday.com provides this facility for members under Responsible as well as Accountable roles to edit their respective columns. After assigning roles to every member, switch on the permission for the members to let them edit the status of their responsibilities and tasks.
#3) Viewer access to the stakeholders
Here there is a facility for stakeholders to get updated automatically. The stakeholders are given the access to view the status of tasks or projects anytime. To make necessary decisions, taking in mind the actual status or performance of the project or organization, respectively. It provides an automation facility to automate the communication process to get others to know the project’s status.
#4) Everyone on the same platform through robust Integrations
monday.com helps in getting everyone from workers to senior executives or from one department to other departments on the same platform through its vast integrations. It provides 50+ pre-built adaptors.
Monday.com provides integration with various applications for sending messages on status change, missed dates, and so on to the stakeholders. Integrations include Gmail, HubSpot, Linkedin, Slack, Microsoft teams, and many more.
#5) A space to lead for the team members
monday.com enables the team members to take their space to lead their work. It ensures that every member is bound to their responsibility and works accordingly without any confusion.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q #1) What are the 4 components of RACI?
Answer: The 4 components are:
- Responsible: The one who does the task.
- Accountable: The one who owns the task.
- Consulted: The one who helps by assisting.
- Informed: The one who needs to be kept aware of project status.
Q #2) What is the Project RACI chart?
Answer: Project RACI chart is the other name of the RACI matrix. It is the table representing different tasks and roles. On the rows, there are tasks or deliverables and on the column side, there are roles. Now, to execute the model, we need to assign given roles under different tasks to the team members. Every team member should be given at least one role.
Q #3) Who developed the RACI model?
Answer: RACI is derived from GDPM(Goal Directed Project Management) published by three Norwegians, Kristoffer v. Grude, Tor Haug, and Erling S. Andersen in the year 1984. This is the tool for organizing projects in the project methodology.
Q #4) What is the RACI model used for?
Answer: It is used for managing projects or tasks more efficiently by assigning roles to the team members. It helps in avoiding work overload, people overload, confusion among team members, and conflicts. It facilitates streamlining communication, smooth transitions, and handoffs.
Q #5) What is the difference between RACI and RASCI?
Answer: RACI stands for Responsible Accountable Consulted and Informed whereas RASCI stands for Responsible Accountable Supportive Consulted and Informed. The difference between the two is just that in later there will be one extra role i.e., Supportive
Q #6) When should you not use RACI?
Answer: We should not use the RACI model if there are small, single-department projects, as it’s likely not necessary because of very few team members. We should also not use it for teams working with an Agile framework like Scrum.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, we are now in a position that knows what is a RACI and RACI framework. It helps manage big projects by having various tasks and deliverables. It simplifies the tasks by assigning roles to every team member that helps in eliminating confusion and conflicts. It helps in streamlining communication and decision-making.
monday.com provides a RACI template and an easy interface to manage the tasks or phases of projects effectively and efficiently.