RACI Matrix
Use when asked to build a RACI matrix specifically — the Responsible/Accountable/Consulted/Informed variant of responsibility-assignment-matrix — including the PARIS variant sometimes used instead.
A RACI matrix is the most common named variant of a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM), assigning each task or deliverable one or more of four responsibility levels for each team member or role involved.
The four levels
- Responsible — the person or people who actually do the work to complete the task.
- Accountable — the person ultimately answerable for the task's correct and complete completion; best practice keeps this to exactly one person per task, so accountability doesn't diffuse across a group.
- Consulted — people whose input or expertise is sought before or during the work, typically through two-way communication.
- Informed — people kept up to date on progress or outcomes, typically through one-way communication, without needing to be consulted beforehand.
Building a RACI matrix
List every task or deliverable down one axis and every team member or role across the other; for each task, mark who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. A single person can hold multiple letters for the same task (frequently Responsible and Accountable together on a small team), but the discipline of assigning exactly one Accountable party per task is what most distinguishes a well-formed RACI matrix from a vague one.
PARIS as an alternative
Some organizations use PARIS (Participate, Approve, Responsible, Input, Sign-off) instead of RACI — a variant with a different set of levels, more oriented toward approval workflows. See Responsibility Assignment Matrix for PARIS and other variants (including RACIO) placed alongside RACI as siblings under the same general RAM concept.
Common pitfalls
- More than one Accountable person per task — the single most common RACI mistake; it recreates the accountability gap the matrix exists to close.
- Confusing Consulted and Informed — Consulted implies two-way input sought before/during the work; Informed is one-way, after the fact. Mislabeling one as the other sets the wrong expectation about whether someone's input is actually being sought.
- Marking too many people Consulted — inflates communication overhead; every added Consulted party adds a check-in the Responsible person must make before proceeding.
- Building it once, at project kickoff, and never updating it — as scope or team composition changes, the matrix should too (see Responsibility Assignment Matrix for this general maintenance point).
Learn more
- Responsibility Assignment Matrix for the general RAM concept and other variants (RACIO, PARIS).
- Statement of Work for a document that commonly embeds a RACI/RACIO matrix directly.