RACI Chart Tool

Introduction

RACI denotes Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed, which are four parameters used in a matrix used in decision making. RACI chart tool outlines the activities undertaken within an organization to that of the people or roles.

In an organization, people can be allocated or assigned to specific roles for which they are responsible, accountable, consulted or informed.

RACI chart tool is a great tool when it comes to identifying employee roles within an organization. This tool can be successfully used when there is role confusion within the company. Role confusion may lead to unproductive work culture.

Parameters in RACI Chart Tool

RACI chart tool represents four parameters as we have already noted in the Introduction. Following are the meanings for each of these parameters:

• Responsible: This is a person, who performs a task or work and he/she is responsible for the work.
• Accountable: Primarily the person in charge of the task or work.
• Consulted: Person, who gives feedback, contribute as and when required.
• Informed: Person in charge who needs to know the action or decision taken.

A sample RACI tool

Benefits of a RACI Chart Tool

Following are the well-noted benefits of this tool for the business organizations:

• Identifying the workload that have been assigned to specific employees or departments
• Making sure that the processes are not overlooked
• Ensuring that new recruits are explained of their roles and responsibilities
• Finding the right balance between the line and project responsibilities
• Redistributing work between groups to get the work done faster
• Open to resolving conflicts and discussions
• Documenting the roles and responsibilities of the people within the organization

How is RACI Chart Tool Used?

Identifying key functions and processes within an organization is the first step towards using the RACI chart tool. Then, the organization needs to outline the activities that take place and should avoid any miscellaneous activities.

Following are the detailed steps for using RACI chart tool:

• Explain each activity that had taken place.
• Create phrases to indicate the result of the decision made.
• Decisions and activities need to be applied to the role rather than targeting the person.
• Create a matrix, which represents the roles and activities and enter the RACI Code created.

Once all the relevant data have been collated and input onto the RACI chart tool, any discrepancies need to be resolved.

Changing Management Issues

The primary reason for creating a RACI chart tool is to resolve organizational issues. It looks at three main factors:

• Role conception: The attitude or thinking of people towards their work roles
• Role expectation: The expectation of a person with regards to another person's job role.
• Role behavior: The activities of people in their job function.

These three concepts help management to identify the misconceptions that people have towards their job roles.

Reasons for Role Confusion

Although role confusion can be solved using RACI chart tool, it is always a good idea to identify the reasons behind such confusion. This helps the organization to avoid such situations occurring in the future.

Following are some of the reasons for role confusion:

• Improper balance of work
• Idle time
• Passing on the ball, being irresponsible
• Confused as to who makes the decisions
• Ineffective communications
• De-motivation
• Filling idle time by creating and attending to non-essential time
• Don't care since no one's bothered attitude

When to Use RACI Chart Tool?

RACI chart tool can be successfully used under the following conditions.

• For employees to get a clear understanding of the role and responsibilities around the work process.
• To improve the understanding of function between departments and responsibilities within one's department.
• To clearly define the roles and responsibilities of team members, who are working on a project.

Steps Taken When Designing RACI Chart Tool

• The first step towards designing RACI chart tool is that the management needs to identify the process or function that faces issues. The process or feature needs to be thoroughly investigated in terms of its requirements and objectives.
• The roles or job functions need to be identified in terms as to which ones will be impacted and who will be implementing the changes.
• The roles to be created will have its owner. The management needs to assign a role to each individual.
• Identify who has an R role (responsible) and then it needs to be listed in terms of A, C and I. RACI chart tools do not work in a way that two people will be held responsible (R) for the same thing.
• Review needs to be conducted so that there are no duplicates in the process.

Conclusion

RACI chart tool is a useful and effective decision making tool that helps to define roles and responsibilities. This is used to identify inefficiencies of organizational roles.

It helps to resolve any functional issues that arise within departments or between individuals.

The main objective of RACI chart tool is to eliminate role confusions and to be able to deliver the product or service successfully to the customer and contribute to the long-term organizational objectives.