A RASCI Matrix to Help Your Teams to Collaborate Effectively

For teams to work well collaboratively, every member must be crystal clear on roles and responsibilities. The RASCI matrix (pronounced ‘racey’) is a simple ‘quick view’ tool that defines who’s involved at what stage and in what capacity. In this way, it helps managers keep everyone on the same page.

RASCI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Supported, Consulted, Informed. It’s an incredibly straightforward and useful model that managers can implement on joining an existing team or starting up an entirely new project. With a RASCI matrix in place, there’s far less room for ambiguity or details slipping through the cracks. Let’s explore how it works. You can also hear us talk about it on our podcast here.

How to populate your RASCI project template

Try setting up your RASCI model during a team meeting. You can identify what the key tasks are as a team, then during the next meeting, you can populate it through discussion and agreement before your project begins.

Responsibility

For each task in the left-hand column, ask the question, ‘Who is the doer (performer) of this task?’ There may be two people responsible for a task, and this can be easily notated. During the process of allocation, you might realise that in fact, there are two tasks involved. In this case, simply break it up and assign it a new row in the matrix.

Accountability

Here we ask, ‘Who has the authority? Who approves the sign off before it the work comes into effect?’ This is usually the manager or project sponsor (and the person to whom ‘R’ is accountable). Ideally there should only ever be one person accountable for the task.

Supportive

This is the person who provides resources to the team or team member. It could be a project sponsor, a mentor, someone providing data or help in a support role. The more information you can add to the matrix the better, so annotate for clarification as you go.

Consultation

This person provides information or expertise. It might be a subject matter expert, someone in finance or data analytics – someone who provides you with valuable specialised advice.

Informed

‘Who needs to be notified of the results or perhaps the project?’ This could be a key stakeholder who doesn’t need to be consulted or referred to for approval, but must be kept in the loop in terms of information and updates.

Tip: All activities needs someone accountable and someone responsible. Try to limit the number of people responsible in a single row to one. (If there’s more than one person in this column, there’s potential for duplication of work.)

Tip: A responsibility person and an accountability person must be assigned to every row.

When to use RASCI

Examples where implementation of the RASCI matrix can be especially useful include:

• A new manager in an existing team uses RASCI to quickly get up to speed with the workings of the team and each member’s roles and responsibilities.
• A new team starting work on a new project uses this model to set people up from scratch with clear lines of accountability.
• Organisations going through change and restructure.
• Job sharing partners in a senior manager position who run a team.
• Those teams with members working flexible hours.
• Virtual teams.
• New people coming into the team who can get an overall snapshot of who does what and when.

Conclusion

Building and working with a team requires absolute clarity when it comes to activities, responsibility and accountability. By helping teams gets clear on the who, what and when of every task, the RASCI model promotes a streamlined workflow that guides project success. We invite you to download our RASCI template, try it out on a project and please - let us know how you go.