Ensuring projects go well is a challenging task.  There’s tasks to sequence, resources to line up and stakeholders to keep updated.  Even on smaller projects this can easily become overwhelming, and failing to follow through properly can lead to some terrible results.  This is where a RACI - Responsible, Accountable, Consult and Inform - chart comes in.

In short, a RACI helps you determine who is involved in a project, and to what degree.  It does take some effort to set up, but once you’ve got it done, it becomes a lot easier to know who is doing what, or who should be involved in specific items.  Let’s take a quick example - updating a data warehouse - to see how each of these fits into the puzzle.  I’ll be digging into each of the letters in followup posts, but in general:

• Responsible - This individual or group is the one doing the work.  In our data warehouse example this might involve writing new code for a data pipeline, or optimizing data structures.

• Accountable - Generally the person or group who ensures the work gets done (and whose neck is on the line if it fails).  In our example this may be an Engineering leader, or a project manager who is overseeing the work.

• Consult - People or groups who may have input, or need to share their needs and point of view.  For our example project this could be downstream groups that use the data warehouse to run reports, or it could be upstream systems that feed data into the warehouse.

• Inform - Anyone who needs to get updates on what is going on.  Generally executives who may be involved, or stakeholders who will indirectly be impacted.  Personally I include these folks on a weekly update just to ensure they know what’s going on.

Ideally a RACI defines each aspect, major task or milestone of a project.  This helps ensure that everyone knows who is doing which part.  Not only does this make planning easier, but if something does go sideways it’s much easier to track down who should be contacted.

Personally I find the time spent building a RACI to be more than worth it.  Not only does this exercise help demonstrate you take the project seriously, but it gives you a valuable tool to use later in planning.