The four letters, precisely
| Role |
What it means |
The test it must pass |
| Responsible |
Does the work. Can be several people per activity. |
If this person stops, does the work stop? |
| Accountable |
Owns the outcome and answers for it. Exactly one per activity. |
When this activity fails, whose name is said in the steering committee? |
| Consulted |
Provides input before the work is done. Two-way dialogue. |
Would proceeding without this person's input create rework or real risk? |
| Informed |
Told after decisions or completion. One-way communication. |
Does this person need to know, or merely want to be included? |
Where a RACI genuinely helps
The matrix matters most at boundaries: between business and IT on an ERP programme, between buyer and vendor after a contract is signed, between the deal team and the integration team after an acquisition closes. These are the points where two organisations each assume the other owns something, and where a decision made in month one goes unowned until it becomes an escalation in month nine. A RACI built activity by activity at those seams is one of the cheapest risk controls available.
Building one that holds
- Write activities as outcomes with a definition of done ("cutover plan approved by operations"), not as vague nouns ("data migration"). Vague rows get vague ownership.
- Assign the Accountable name first, and make it a person, never a team or committee. Then resist every attempt to add a second.
- Cap the Consulted column deliberately. Each C adds a delay and an implicit veto; each one should be justified by risk, not by courtesy.
- Walk the finished matrix through two or three realistic failure scenarios. If a scenario produces a debate about whose row it is, the matrix is not finished.
A recognisable example
On a typical ERP cutover, the row "legacy system decommissioning" is where RACI discipline shows. The systems integrator is Responsible for execution, the client's IT director is Accountable, finance is Consulted because historical reporting obligations constrain the timing, and the audit committee is Informed. Written that way, a nine-month argument about who signs off the switch-off date never happens, because the chart already answered it in week two, while everyone was still calm.
The failure patterns that give a RACI away
A failed RACI is easy to diagnose from the document alone.
- Everyone is Consulted and nobody is denied. The C column has become a politeness register, and every activity now moves at the speed of its slowest stakeholder.
- The Accountable row names a committee, a function or two people "jointly". Shared accountability is unaccountability with better manners.
- The matrix was produced after the first major conflict, as a weapon, and each side now quotes its favourite rows at the other.
- The chart lives in the programme initiation document and was last opened at kick-off. If escalations are being resolved by seniority rather than by the matrix, the matrix is dead.
- Senior sponsors appear as Accountable on forty rows. One person cannot answer for forty outcomes; the true owner is hiding one level down.
Where an outside view sharpens it
Internally, RACI negotiations are shaped by hierarchy and history: nobody wants to strip a senior stakeholder of a C, and nobody volunteers to hold the A on the riskiest row. Senior operators who have run comparable programmes can review a draft matrix and point to the rows that caused escalations in their own organisations: usually data ownership, third-party management and benefits realisation. That challenge is far cheaper before mobilisation than during month nine.
