Make decisions using RACI framework (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed)

Follow the RACI decision-making framework to assign roles and responsibilities as it relates to your project, and ultimately come to the right decisions.

Use this play to...

Define roles for making high-impact or high-risk group decisions
Improve decision making, team cohesion and shared understanding

Running the play

The RACI decision-making framework, used effectively, will assist in group decision making on a project or initiative by assigning roles and responsibilities to tasks, bringing clarity and structure to the project, and assisting in group decision making. This play will guide you through the RACI framework, helping you set up your tracking document, assign roles, and make and share decisions.

What does RACI stand for?

Responsible: people doing the work, completing the task, and/or making the decision.

Accountable: ideally a singular person who owns the work and is accountable for the deliverable, providing sign-off or approval.

Consulted: those whose input is necessary to make a decision.

Informed: those who should be informed/updated on the status of the decision, but not formally consulted or providing input.

As you consider whether a group decision needs to follow the RACI framework, take the timeliness, impact and scope into account. Decisions that affect the work of multiple people on the project – cross-functional, cross-departmental probably need a RACI, smaller, isolated decisions may not.

Create your tracking document

Set yourself up to be able to effectively make decisions for your project or initiative by developing a template.

Use the RACI template as a starting point and modify as needed. You’ll add more to this document in the coming days/weeks as you work through the consultations and background necessary to make a particular decision.

Materials

RACI template

Determine roles

When you encounter a situation where a decision is required, start by defining the various stakeholders affected by your decision.

Who is Responsible?
Determine who is working on the task(s) associated with the decision. They don’t necessarily drive the entire project, just the work associated with that particular decision.

Who is Accountable?
Identify who is responsible to make the decision. Ideally, this should only be one person.

Who needs to be Consulted?
There may be multiple teams or individuals who should be consulted in the decision. This may include people from outside the core team – anyone with relevant knowledge or experience.

Who should be Informed?
This is anyone directly affected by the decision and will likely include people outside the core team.

In order to help identify the stakeholders affected and mitigate risks, review your template and critically think about the work – some questions you could consider include:

If the Responsible person is away, who would they delegate to?
Are there too many Responsible individuals listed?
Is someone Accountable for each task?
Do we have too many people who need to be Consulted? Could some simply be Informed?

Tip

RACI is an excellent framework and tool for project managers. Be sure to consult the play Build a project management plan for further information on how to successfully navigate and achieve your project goals.

Make your plan

In addition to assigning roles and responsibilities, you’ll need to think about all the information necessary in order to make your final decision. Whether you’re using the RACI template or have developed your own, include a section that addresses the following information as it relates to your project as a whole.

Due date – the deadline for making the decision.
Background – the reason(s) this decision is required.
Current state – where you’re at right now.
Supporting data – the research you’ve done to inform your decision.
Options considered – a table with a column for each option where you can summarize pros and cons, risks, trade-offs, estimated cost or effort, etc.
Recommendations – opinions from those you’ve consulted with.
FAQs – a place to answer frequently-asked (or anticipated) questions.
References – a list of links to reference material, along with a brief description of why the material is relevant.
Action items – a list of tasks or follow-ups related to the decision.
Outcome – a place to state which option you ultimately go with.

Get your team involved

Now that you’ve assigned roles and responsibilities and filled in the pertinent information for your project tasks/decisions, it’s valuable to get feedback from your team. At this point, you may need specific people to fill in specific sections of the page, or may simply desire general feedback. Send the page around to your team and incorporate input.

The RACI play can be stressful, especially if decisions are contentious or politically-charged. You just did your team a great service by taking time to lay down a clear group decision-making framework to work with. Using the RACI framework can help to ensure that everyone on your team is clear and informed, aware of their responsibilities and those of the team, which ultimately leads effective decision making and a successful outcome.

Tip

If you feel like things have stalled out or you’re going in circles, get the Responsible person and those Consulted together – if you’re close to making a decision, it might be helpful to include the person Accountable, too. Let people express their concerns, recommendations, ideas for other options, etc. An hour in-person can save valuable time and get your decision back on track.

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This work is a derivative of “DACI” by Atlassian and used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Date modified:: 2019-12-12

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