The RACI (and RASCI) Chart

What is a RACI chart?

A RACI chart is a simple matrix used to assign roles and responsibilities for each task, milestone, or decision. By clearly mapping out which roles are involved in each task and at which level, you can eliminate confusion and answer the age-old question, “Who’s doing what?”

RACI is a useful complement to a process map, since it can get into more detailed and specific activities than a high-level process map. Think of a process map at one level of abstraction and RACI as the next level of detail

What does RACI stand for?

RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed. Each letter in the acronym represents a level of task responsibility.

When to use RACI

RACI’s are best used in procedures as part of the responsibilities section or to start each section in a long procedure.

RACI’s are great tools that can help:

Design or re-design processes more efficiently by highlighting decisions
Clarify overlapping, redundant, “bottle-necked,” or inconsistent responsibilities
Structure and distribute responsibility and authority
Establish clear lines of communication
Reduce duplication of efforts; pinpoint what can “come off the plate”

RACI definitions

A RACI is a matrix of tasks or deliverables and the roles associated with them.

Each box in the matrix identifies that role’s function in the task

Responsible – primary role performing the work
Accountable – role primarily responsible for the work getting done (and done correctly)
Consulted – roles providing input into the task or deliverable. Consulted means prior to the decision/activity.
Informed – roles to be informed of the outcome of the task or deliverable so that they may fulfill execute their role in the process or other process.

I’m a big fan of adding Supporting, and doing a RASCI. Supporting is very helpful in identifying individuals who provide support services, and often capture indirect accountabilities.

Key point – only one Responsible and one Accountable role for any task or deliverable. In some processes, Responsible and Accountable may be the same role

How to create a RACI

Follow these 3 steps, using the RACI chart example below as your guide:

Enter all responsibilities in the procedure across the top row.
List all procedural steps/tasks, milestones, and decisions down the left column.
For each step, assign a responsibility value to each role or person on the team.

Ensure the following:

Every task has one Responsible person (and only one!).
There’s one (and only one!) Accountable party assigned to each task to allow for clear decision-making.
If you have a lot of C and I roles on your matrix, make sure you have an easy and lightweight way to keep them informed in the procedure.

Some points to consider:

Have a representative from each of the major functions that participate in the process
Reach consensus on all Accountabilities and Responsibilities
Consider the emotional aspects of documenting “A”s and “R”s, including job justification
Eliminate excessive “C”s and “I”s
Consider the organization’s culture

Review the RACI chart vertically to:

Avoid under- or over-committing positions or team members
Eliminate unnecessary gates and bottlenecks
Designate appropriate skill sets

Review the RACI chart horizontally to:

Clarify any ambiguous division of labor
Ensure adequate continuity across decisions and process steps
Ensure accountability and authority to get the job done

Although the RACI is a simple tool, the process of creating it and having it agreed is a political process.

Developing RACI charts surfaces many organizational issues because it confronts the three elements of roles and responsibilities:

Role Conception: what people think their jobs are and how they have been trained to perform them
Role Expectation: what others in the organization think another person’s job is and how it should be carried out
Role Behavior: what people actually do in carrying out their job

Example

	Deviation Creator	Area Responsible	QA	Investigation Team	Site Head
Take real-time action to minimize and contain the effect of an event	R	A	I	–	–
Assemble cross functional team for Triage	R	A	I	–	–
Determine if the event is a deviation	R	C	A	C	–
Define batch association strategy	C	R	A	I	–
Define Containment	C	R	A	C	–
Create Deviation in eQMS in 24 hr	R	A	I	–	–
Gather Data	C	A/R	C	C	–

Using the Outcome Identification Loop

The Outcome Identification Loop asks four questions around a given outcome which can be very valuable in understanding a proposed design, event, or risk.

The four questions are:

1	Who else might this affect?	Stakeholder Question
2	What else might affect them?	Stakeholder Impact Question
3	What else might affect this?	System/analysis Design Question
4	What else might this affect?	Consequence Question?

4 questions in the Outcome Identification Loop

Through answering these questions, outcomes and relationships to further define a central question, and can be used to shape problem-solving, risk mitigation, and process improvement.

Questions 1 “Who else might this affect?’ and 2 “What else might affect them?’ are paired questions from stakeholder identification and analysis techniques.

Question 3 “What else might affect this?” relates to system analysis and design and can be fed by, and lead to, the chains of outcomes elicited using analysis methods, such as process modelling and root cause analysis.

Question 4 “What else might this affect?” considers uncertainty and risk.

These four questions can be iterative. Use them near the beginning to define the problem and then at the end to tie together the entire work.

Indirect Accountability

The kind of accountability most of us are familiar with is direct accountability: a role is assigned a task and is directly accountable for their result. The role understands the quality, quantity, timeframe, and resource constraints of the deliverable and has the authority to implement plans to achieve it. When completing a RACI this is what we mean by accountability.

Ideally, the individual with direct accountability has the context to understand the limits in which they must work and sufficient knowledge about all of the factors that must be considered to make good decisions. However, that’s not always the case, and for this reason, organizations need to establish lateral roles of indirect accountability to ensure these factors are brought to the attention of the role with direct accountability.

Indirect roles are responsible for initiating action toward directly accountable roles. Indirect roles may be responsible for:

Informing: being aware of the factors surrounding the direct and initiating contact to offer advice and recommendations.
Persuading: persuading the direct to adjust their actions when there is a risk of undermining process control or when multiple roles fail to work together effectively.
Instructing: ordering the direct to stop when working outside of limits and/or take prescribed action to mitigate a catastrophic event.
Responding: Provide the direct service and support

Often these indirects are accountable in a supporting process.

Facilitating Stakeholder Analysis

Recently shred this with a team member and figured it would be of use to someone else.

I use a a table like this for recording stakeholders

Role	Stakeholder Organization (e.g. Department, Function)	Name & Title	Pains	Gains	Impact of Proposal on Role	Importance of securing stakeholder support	RACI

Stakeholder Table

Design Lifecycle within PDCA – Planning

In the post “Review of Process/Procedure” I mentioned how the document draft and review cycle can be seen as an iterative design cycle. In this post I want to expand on the design lifecycle as a fundamental expression of PDCA that sits at the heart of all we do.

PDCA, a refresher

PDCA (and it’s variants) are a pretty tried and true model for process improvement. In the PDCA model a plan is structured in four steps: P (plan) D (do) C (check) A (act). The intention is create a structured cycle that allows the process to flow in accordance with the objectives to be achieved (P), execute what was planned (D), check whether the objectives were achieved with emphasis on the verification of what went right and what went wrong (C) and identify factors of success or failure to feed a new process of planning (A).

Conceptually, the organization will be a fast turning wheel of endlessly learning from mistakes and seeking to maximize processes in order to remain forever in pursuit of strategic objectives, endlessly searching for the maximum efficiency and effectiveness of the system.

PDCA cycle driving continuous improvement

Design Lifecycle

This design lifecycle just takes the PDCA spiral and spreads it across time. At the same time it breaks down a standard set of activities and recognizes the stage gates from moving between startup (or experiment) and continuous improvement.

Identifying the Problem (Plan)

At it’s heart problem-solving requires understanding a set of requirements and building for success.

I always go back to the IEEE definition of “A requirement is a condition or capability needed by a user to solve a problem or achieve an objective; a condition or capability that must be met or possessed by a system or system component to satisfy a contract ,standard, specification , or other formally imposed document; a document representation of condition or capability “

A requirement can be explicitly stated, implicit, inherited or derived from other requirements.

The first place to look for requirements is the organization itself.

Understanding the needs of the organization

The cultural needs of the organization drives the whole problem-solving and requirement gathering activity and it starts by being clear on Strategy and understanding the goals and objectives and how these goals percolate to the different business processes that we are improving. This gives a good starting point to focus on what opportunities to be explored and what problems to be solved.

It is not uncommon in the problem-solving phase that the objectives/needs are not known, so we must work our way through figuring out what the initial need is. Go back to the fundamentals of understanding the business processes “as-is” and review existing regulations, standards, guidelines and other internal sources of requirements followed currently. This is the time to interview stakeholders and go the GEMBA.

We state the problem, and re-frame it. And now we can move on to Requirement Elicitation.

Requirement Elicitation

Requirement Elicitation is the process of probing and facilitating the stakeholders to provide more clarity and granular details pertaining to the (usual) high-level requirement gathered so far. This is a discovery process, exploratory in nature, focusing on finding enough details so that a solution can be envisioned and developed. Elicitation is not an isolated activity, and has been happening throughout the process by all the discussion, interaction, analysis, verification and validation up to now.

You should be engaging with knowledge management throughout the cycle, but ensure there is specific engagement here.

It is a progressive process where the requirement clarity ushers in increments and may need multiple rounds of probing/discussions. As the new details are uncovered the requirements are further elaborated and detailed. There are a whole toolbox of elicitation techniques and like any engagement it is important to properly prepare.

Requirement Analysis

Requirement Analysis pertains to extracting the requirement out of the heaps of information acquired from various stakeholders and communicated and turned into documentation in a form that is easily understood by the stakeholders, including the project team. Here we are engaging in requirement refinement, modification, clarification, validation & finalization and engaging in extensive communication.

A requirement can be classified as:

External or Internal Obligation
Business requirement: The organizational need
Stakeholder requirement
Functional Requirement
Non-Functional Requirement
Transitioning requirement

We build for traceability here, so as we build and test solutions we can always trace back to the requirements.

Design the Solution

Building for the solution includes change management. Any solution focuses both on the technical, the organization and the people.

Ensure you leverage risk management.

The Place of Empathy

In this design process, we address and use empathy to acquire insight into users’ (stakeholders) needs and inform the design process and create a relevant solution. Using an approach informed by cognitive empathy, we apply different methods to build up that competence and insight, enabling us to prioritize the needs of the users and make the results of the process more desirable.

Psychological safety, reflexivity and sense-making inform our work.

Prepare for Startup

By engaging in Design Thinking we are ready for Startup. Moving through the three steps of:

Problem-Solving
Requirement Elicitation
Design Solution

We have created a plan to execute against. Startup, which can often be Experimentation, is it’s own, future, post.