RACI vs RAPID Responsibility Matrix
Business challenge
Identifying who will be responsible for the task execution & decision-makers roles within the team for achieving the success of the project is one of the biggest challenges in the project management journey.
Solution
Responsibility visibility ensures the highest level of quality is achieved during the required timeline. The most popular and widely used responsibility and accountability matrices are RACI and its well-known variations RACI-VS, RACIO, and RASCI. A much less widely adopted method alternative approach is RAPID.
What is RACI?
A RACI chart can be an extremely effective way to define project roles, give direction to each team member and stakeholder, and ensure work gets done efficiently. Having a RACI chart available throughout the duration of your project as a quick visual can be invaluable.
How to make RACI Chart?
A RACI chart creates clear roles and gives direction to each team member and stakeholder. Over your career, you may hear a RACI chart referred to as a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM), RACI diagram, or RACI matrix. The ultimate goal of this chart is to clarify each person’s role in your project.
First, let’s break down each of the roles people can be assigned:
R: Responsible: who gets the work done.the person who actually owns the project, task, or work. An example would be the Project Manager.
A: Accountable: who makes sure the work is done.the person who will sign off on the work and judge its completion and how it meets quality standards. This could be the Project Sponsor or whoever has final sign-off authority.
C: Consulted: who gives input or feedback on work.the person who has the ability or knowledge needed to complete the work. These can be Stakeholders, Subject matter experts, or anyone else who is key to completing the work.
I: Informed: who needs to know the outcome. people who must be kept informed of the work, but not necessarily consulted. An example would be the Stakeholders.
Variations of RACI
RACI-VS
RACI-VS offers two extra indicators i.e. Verification (V) and Sign-Off (S). In core RACI, there is a chance of missing out on any completion details against any task. To overcome any possible deficiencies in any task, RACI-VS allows marking those roles as “V” who will scrutinize the quality and correctness of a given specific task. And to supervise both “V” and “R” | “A” roles, there will be a role “S”-Sign-off who will provide the task completion verdict by approving it.
RACIO (OR CAIRO)
RACIO offers an extra participation type “O” which often means “Omitted” or “Out of the Loop”. It just allows explicit mentioning of the roles excluded from the scope of a certain task. This helps in clarifying the engaged and unengaged resources in a task/project.
RASCI
“S” which stands for “Support” is a participation type that is similar to “Consult” in terms of the kind of involvement e.g. providing knowledge and resources to a task/project, but differs in the involvement duration and end goals. “Support” roles seek the completion of the task and remain actively involved throughout the task/project timeline. Whereas, the Consultancy roles do not have any such aims.
Other Variations
- DRASCI: it is just like RASCI but has a “D-Driver” who centrally delegates the responsibilities.
- DACI: it replaces “D-Driver” with “R-Responsible” in RACI.
- RATSI: it’s a further derivation of RASCI which highlights the actual “T-Task” performers which can further help in detailed Resource evaluation
What is RAPID?
RAPID is quite different from RACI. It focuses on assigning decision-making responsibilities between different roles, unlike RACI which is purely task-driven. The need for RAPID originated with the growth of continuously evolving and collaborating hierarchies of one or more companies or teams where there are multi-level managerial and leadership roles against any single decision.
RAPID has participants who:
- R: Make a Recommendation
- A: Establish an Agreement
- P: Perform and Execute
- I: Provide Necessary Inputs
- D: Make centralized Decisions and enforce them
RACI vs RAPID — How to choose?
None of the above matrices can be categorized as good or bad. The approach of each depends upon the relevance of the matrix with respect to the nature of the project, tasks, and work hierarchy.
The next best step is to take it on a test run with some real-world tasks, processes, and projects before adopting one or the other approach enterprise-wide. The test phase will quickly highlight the shortcomings of each method.
