RACI Matrix

A RACI matrix is a grid that makes ownership explicit. Down one side you list the tasks or decisions; across the top you list the people or roles; and in each cell you record one of four letters — Responsible, Accountable, Consulted or Informed. It is a form of what project managers call a responsibility assignment matrix, and its whole value is killing the question "wait, who owns this?" before it becomes drift.

The four letters mean distinct things, and the distinction matters:

• Responsible — the people who do the work. There can be several.
• Accountable — the single person who answers for the outcome. There should be exactly one per row; this is the rule that does the real work.
• Consulted — people whose input is sought before the work proceeds (two-way).
• Informed — people kept up to date on progress or outcome (one-way).

Why it matters

Most ownership failures are not laziness; they are ambiguity. When two people each assume the other is accountable, the work falls between them and nobody notices until it is late. A RACI matrix forces a single accountable name per row, which is why it pairs so directly with the difference between accountability and responsibility: many hands can be responsible, but accountability does not divide.

Keeping it useful

A RACI matrix earns its keep only if it stays light. Two failure modes kill it: too many rows, so nobody reads it, and two A's on a single row, which quietly recreates the ambiguity it was meant to remove. Map only the tasks where ownership is genuinely unclear, give each exactly one accountable owner, and revisit it when the work changes. Used that way it complements a RAID log — the RAID log tracks what might go wrong, the RACI tracks who answers for it.