RACI Matrix: Meaning, Example and How to Create One

An invoice sits unpaid for two weeks because everyone assumed someone else would approve it. Friction like this rarely comes from a lack of skill. It comes from unclear responsibilities, and a RACI matrix fixes that on a single page. This guide explains the four letters, walks through an example, shows how to create your own matrix in five steps and gives you a template to copy. It ends with a question most guides skip: what happens when the person behind a letter leaves the company?

What is a RACI matrix?

A RACI matrix, also called a RACI chart, responsibility assignment matrix or linear responsibility chart, describes how different roles take part in completing tasks. RACI is an acronym of responsible, accountable, consulted and informed. Each row is a task or decision, each column is a role, and the letter in the cell says how that role is involved.

The tool is best known from project management, but it works just as well for recurring work. In a guide for a chapter of the Project Management Institute, Michael L. Smith and James Erwin name three uses: roles around a work process, roles within a department and roles on a project team.

What R, A, C and I mean

Responsible vs accountable: where most charts go wrong

The two words sound alike, and that is where the confusion starts. Responsible is about doing: the person or people who complete the task. Accountable is about owning: the one person who approves the work and answers for it if it goes wrong. CIO magazine calls clear accountability the golden rule of the model: several people can be responsible, only one can be accountable.

In small teams the same person often does the work and owns the result. That is written as A/R in one cell. What you should avoid is a task with two As or with none.

Example: RACI matrix for a small trading company

The example is invented and shows the format: a business with twelve employees, seven tasks from quote to month end close and five roles. An empty cell means the role is not involved.

How to read it: sales prepares the quote and also answers for it (A/R). The office manager is asked first because that role knows the delivery times (C), and the managing director is told (I). For incoming invoices, doing and owning are split: the office manager checks them (R), the bookkeeper is accountable (A).

How to create a RACI matrix in 5 steps

The five steps follow the process described by Smith and Erwin.

1. Pick the process

Start with a process where confusion costs time or money today, not one that is about to change anyway. As a rule of thumb, Smith and Erwin suggest 10 to 25 activities: fewer means the scope is too narrow, more means it is too broad.

2. List the tasks and decisions

Start every row with a clear action verb: check, approve, order, report. Include decisions explicitly, because that is where most arguments start. Existing process documentation gives you most of the list.

3. List the roles

Put roles in the columns, not names. The chart should still be valid if entirely new people filled the roles tomorrow. Roles can be individuals, groups or whole departments, including outsiders such as customers, suppliers or your accounting firm.

4. Assign the letters

Assign the Rs first, then the one A per row, then the Cs and Is. Do this with the people involved. Smith and Erwin consider four to ten people the ideal group size.

5. Get feedback, share and maintain

Send the chart to everyone who appears on it but was not in the room and reissue it with their changes. Roles drift over time, so revisit the chart whenever tasks, roles or people change.

Review the finished chart: read the rows and the columns

A RACI chart only becomes useful once you read it critically. Smith and Erwin suggest two directions: horizontally by task and vertically by role.

Two things stand out in the example. The managing director holds three of the seven As, so approving payments up to a fixed amount could move to the bookkeeper. And the office manager holds three Rs in unrelated processes: ordering, invoice checks and payroll preparation. When that person is away, three processes stop at once.

Two more guidelines from Smith and Erwin belong in every review: whoever holds an A needs the authority that goes with it, and Cs and Is should be kept to a minimum.

RACI matrix template to copy

Select the template below, paste it into Excel or Google Sheets and replace the tasks and roles.

Variants: RASCI and DACI

• RASCI or RASIC: adds S for support, a role that helps the R with the work.
• DACI: driver, approver, contributors, informed. Atlassian describes it as a framework for single decisions with exactly one approver.

What a RACI matrix does not show

The chart answers who is involved, not how the work is done or when. Atlassian lists this as a limitation: RACI charts clarify who is involved in a task but give no guidance on performing it. Smith and Erwin make the same point: the chart shows who does what at a high level, and when more detail is needed, which is often, you add process maps or write down the steps. For a single task, that is what an SOP does. An R also does not say that the role can actually do the task. That is what a skills matrix shows.

When the person behind the letter leaves

A chart built on roles rather than names survives a staff change on paper, which is why Atlassian recommends RACI charts for restructuring and personnel changes. In practice, more than a letter leaves with the person. Smith and Erwin point out that people's idea of their own role often rests on false assumptions, for example on training received from a predecessor during that person's last week on the job.

So use the chart as a handover checklist. Read the column of the role that is becoming vacant from top to bottom:

• Every R: how exactly does the person do it? Which special cases, deadlines and contacts are involved? That belongs in a handover document.
• Every A: who decides from tomorrow, and with which authority?
• Every C: which expertise do others rely on this person for?
• Every I: which mailing lists and meetings does the person leave?

In the example this means for the office manager: three processes with an R, one decision with an A and one C that sales relies on for every quote. Building cover for critical roles early is the task of succession planning. The whole exit process is described in the guide to offboarding.

Conclusion

A RACI matrix settles on one page who does a task, who answers for it, who is asked and who is told. Stick to the one hard rule, exactly one A per task, and read the columns as carefully as the rows, because that is where you see which role carries the most. And keep in mind that the chart only says who is responsible. How the work is done has to be written down before the person who knows it leaves.