RACI Chart

RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. It is a role and responsibility charting technique to define the roles of involvement of members for project work products.

The chart clarifies

• Responsible: Who is responsible?
• Accountable: Who is accountable?
• Consulted: Who must be consulted?
• Informed: Who must be informed?

Responsible

A responsible team member is a person who actually accomplishes the task. We need to assign at least one member as responsible to accomplish the task.

Example: Tester or a QA resource in a test execution cycle.

Accountable

Accountable person delegates work to others. It’s a good practice to have only one Accountable resource assigned to each deliverable.

Example: Test Manager of the project accountable for the test effort on the project.

Consulted

Consulted members are the domain of expertise. Deliverables are consulted with these members for review comments, further improvements, critical issues, etc.

Example: Automation Architect expert in the organization consulted for finalizing the tool to be used in the project before starting automation on the project.

Informed

Informed members are just kept in the loop for the project communications. For example, upper management in the organization.

Example: Director of the organization.

Sample RACI chart prepared in Excel