A new way to think about RACI

Do you use the RACI model to help with stakeholder management?

RACI is a way of categorising stakeholders to help define their roles and responsibilities, and it is also useful for communications plans.  The most common way to see RACI used is in tabular form – with the letters across the top and the list of stakeholders down the side.  The letters across the top stand for:

• Responsible:  these people have responsibility for certain tasks
• Accountable:  this is the person accountable for the job in hand
• Consulted:  these people would like to know about the task and we would seek their opinions
• Informed:  this group get one-way communication to keep them up-to-date with progress and other messages

A tabular format is fine for documenting the RACI profile of your stakeholders.  If you have difficulty trying to remember how many you have in each group, think of RACI as a triangle:

There is only one person accountable for the task or project, and they are at the top.  You then have several people responsible for various elements.  A larger group is consulted and provides input.  An even larger group gets regular communications but are not active in any other way.

This is a useful project management tool which highlights the type of input each stakeholder or group of stakeholders is going to have – but you actually have to make sure that everyone is involved for the project to be a success.  At least RACI gives you a starting point in identifying and categorising stakeholders, so you can then properly engage them.

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