What is a RACI Chart? How to Use – Free Templates

Having a hard time tracking who is responsible for what on a project? Well, we have just the quick & easy fix you need. 

The RACI Matrix is a popular project management tool used to assign, define, and clarify the roles of individuals or teams working on a shared task. It uses four levels of task ownership: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed –  taking your project strategy down to the individual level, and making sure everyone knows what to do, and what to expect from others.

In product & project management, it is widely used to promote team coordination and collaboration. Especially in large, complex ventures involving hundreds of people working across cross-functional departmental operations and processes, RACI charts can increase team accountability, enhance operational clarity, and optimize project processes. 

The RACI model is also recognized for its ability to help teams manage risks or adapt to unforeseen changes during the execution stage (but more on that later!)

In today’s post, learn how to make your own RACI chart and minimize confusion about project roles. We also direct you to our free, editable templates so you can get started right away!

What Is A RACI Chart?

A RACI chart is a systematic way of showing your tasks, stakeholders, and the relationships between them in a diagram form. For those of you who are new to the framework, here’s what each task ownership level is all about:

Responsible

This refers to any person or team actively working to deliver a task output. A single project deliverable may require the efforts of just one individual or multiple teams, depending on the nature & scope of your task.

Accountable

The accountable party is the one ensuring a task is completed on time and meets the required standards. Accountable parties are typically those in a leadership or management role. If you are confused as to how Responsible and Accountable differ, just remember this: you are only responsible for a task if it is your job to complete the task. On the other hand, you are accountable for a task if your job is to make sure the task is completed. 

Consulted

This refers to any person or team whose knowledge or expertise is needed for a task. These could be subject matter experts or senior industry professionals you reach out to for their advice before, or constructive feedback after you complete a task. That said, a consulted party can also be individuals or teams who aren’t directly working on a specific task but whose work will be affected by its outcome.

Informed

To identify the informed party, ask yourself who needs to be updated on the progress of your task. Perhaps, a department manager or a fellow team member whose work is closely tied to yours? While these people may not actively or directly contribute, it is important to keep them in the loop.

When Do You Need a RACI Framework?

Imagine you are leading a software development project for a high-end fashion brand’s digital transformation. You have a team of 40 people, including data scientists, full-stack developers, UX designers, testers, and business analysts. With so many moving parts, your biggest challenge is ensuring that tasks are clearly assigned and that decisions are made efficiently without confusion or overlap.

Without a structured approach, problems start to emerge. Developers might wait on design approvals that were never formally assigned. Business analysts might provide input too late because they were unaware of the progress. Testers may receive incomplete information, causing last-minute errors. With so many specialists involved, project bottlenecks and delays become unavoidable.

To avoid these pitfalls, you apply the RACI framework—a simple system that defines four key roles for every major task:

• Responsible (R) – Who actually performs the task.
• Accountable (A) – Who owns the outcome and makes key decisions.
• Consulted (C) – Who provides expert input before work is finalized.
• Informed (I) – Who needs updates but doesn’t actively contribute.

Applying RACI to the Design Phase

Let’s say you are at the design stage, specifically defining the system architecture. This is a critical task that requires input from multiple teams. Without clear role definitions, confusion can arise—who makes the final decision? Who provides input? Who needs to be kept informed?

By applying RACI:

• Responsible: The developers are responsible for implementing the architecture.
• Accountable: The product owner is accountable for ensuring it meets requirements and deadlines.
• Consulted: The project manager, business analyst, and UX/UI designers provide expert insights.
• Informed: The QA testers and deployment team stay updated so they can plan accordingly.

This approach prevents delays, miscommunication, and overlapping responsibilities, ensuring that each task is completed efficiently. The RACI framework is particularly useful in complex projects where multiple departments need to collaborate but must avoid stepping on each other’s toes.

RACI Matrix Example for System Architecture Design

Task	Developers	Product Owner	Project Manager	Business Analyst	UX/UI Designers	QA Testers
Define system architecture	R	A	C	C	C	I
Approve architecture blueprint	R	A	C	C	C	I
Provide UX/UI design considerations	C	C	C	C	R	I
Finalize technical documentation	R	A	C	C	C	I

How To Make Your Own RACI Chart

Making your own RACI matrix is easier than it sounds. Once you know what your work involves and who’s on your team, all you need to do is follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Identifying your stakeholders

Come up with a list of everyone involved in your project. It might be helpful to take a phase-by-phase approach and think of all the stakeholders you need to engage during each phase of the project’s lifecycle.

Let’s say you’re updating the homepage on your company’s website. Your stakeholders will be you (the project manager), a copywriter, a designer, and a web developer. For more complex, long-term projects, teams are naturally bigger but thankfully, RACI makes it easier to manage large teams, assign work, and keep everyone in the loop. 

Remember, stakeholders aren’t just people actively working as part of a project team. If you are working with third parties, like sub-contractors, you need to jot down their names and job titles too. This is particularly vital in the construction industry, where it is common for individual electricians, roofers, light technicians, gilders, etc., to perform individual tasks.

Stakeholders also include project sponsors, donors, or investors who will need to be regularly updated on your progress once the project takes off.

Now plot all your stakeholders in a row, preferably sorting them by team.

Step 2: Creating a list of tasks

One of the first and key steps in project planning is identifying what needs to be done. Once you break down your project goal into smaller, more manageable chunks of work, what you are left with is the heart and soul of your project: an organized list of specific & actionable tasks. 

A task can be anything from producing a deliverable to taking an important decision or reviewing someone else’s work, so it might be a good idea to start with the most urgent and high-impact ones. You can always use our Prioritization Matrix to prioritize tasks in terms of their impact and how much effort they need from you.

Map out your tasks in a column, preferably breaking them down by phase. Remember to be thorough by making sure you include all key deliverables, milestones, and critical decision-making processes of your project.

Step 3: Assign RACI roles to individual stakeholders

Now that you have nailed down your tasks and task owners – it’s time to let the RACI model work its charm. 

Fill out your grid by assigning each stakeholder a RACI role (see above) for every task, depending on their relation to it. 

At this point, you might find yourself asking questions like: 

• Who’s contacting third parties? 
• Who’s holding other team members accountable for their tasks? 
• Who needs to stay in the loop about new decisions, even if they aren’t involved?

To avoid confusion, always have one person accountable for each task; in most cases, this will be your project manager or a team leader.

Step 4: Review your RACI chart as a team

As every project manager knows, a well-executed project absorbs and acts on feedback from all relevant stakeholders.

Once you have matched RACI roles to your team members for the entire task list, it’s time to sit everyone down and review the whole chart as a team. Other team members might come with a fresh perspective and notice you have missed something – or someone.

Once you are satisfied that all members of your team are on the same page about their roles, it might be a good idea to reach out to external stakeholders (say, domain or industry experts) so you can incorporate their feedback before the project gets moving.

Example

Now, to piece everything together for you – we applied the RACI approach to a hypothetical software development project, and here’s what we ended up with, (pretty cool, huh?):

Pin

RACI vs. DACI: What’s Better?

RACI is by no means the only game in town. Alternative frameworks like DACI can also be tailored in the same way to most project plans and methodologies. Skim through the chart below to learn more about the DACI framework and how it differs from RACI before you decide which one you like more!

RACI	DACI
A role assignment tool	A decision-making model
Roles: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed	Roles: Driver, Approver, Contributor and Informed
Focuses on who is responsible for completing specific tasks	Focuses on the course of action for a specific task
Uses terms that convey more clarity and accountability	Uses terms as they convey more flexibility and collaboration
Distinguishes between consulted and informed roles	Combines them into one contributor role
More suitable for larger and more complex projects that require a lot of coordination	More suitable for smaller and simpler projects that require less detail and coordination

7 Tips & Best Practices for Assigning RACI Roles

Here are some useful tips & best practices to consider when assigning RACI roles for your project:

• Ideally, each task should have only one accountable person and no more.
• Not every task or milestone needs a consulted party. To avoid clogging the process with too much input, have only one consulted party per affected team.
• For best results, use a RACI matrix in tandem with a communication plan that neatly aligns with the roles & relationships you’ve outlined for your stakeholders.
• Consider involving subject matter or industry experts to make sure that specialized tasks are accurately assigned.
• Avoid situations where any single team member is overloaded with too many tasks as this creates a weak link that could spell disaster for the project if that person fails to deliver.
• If your team is working on a project similar to ones you’ve done before, then tracking using RACI might not be necessary since everyone involved already knows what to do. But if you are working on a new project, you might need to use RACI so everyone in the team can get used to the process. 

Using RACI Matrix Templates by WordLayout

At WordLayout, our team conducted in-depth research into the most popular role assignment matrices and charts out there. Based on this, we developed a series of customizable templates to suit a variety of different project needs and design preferences. 

The templates we offer are pre-made spreadsheets where we use basic Excel features like color-coded systems, drop-down menus, and simple grid layouts to help you systematically assign roles at the individual or team levels.

Who Benefits from Our Templates?

• Project Managers
• Team Leaders
• Stakeholders
• Business Analysts
• HR and Operational Managers

6 Ways You Can Benefit from Our RACI Templates

Whether you are leading a marketing campaign or organizing a charity fundraiser, RACI-based templates are extremely useful as they help you:

• Visualize project roles and responsibilities at a more granular level than a Resource Plan
• Reduce the risk of individual employee burnout
• Minimize confusion regarding the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders
• Prevent one or a few individuals from bearing the burden of most of the work
• Help teams communicate clearly and keep only the right & relevant people in the loop
• Expedite the project management process and optimize workflow by promoting full transparency from day one

Wrap Up

A RACI Chart template is a simple but powerful tool for understanding and assigning tasks for any project, regardless of its size, nature, or complexity. That said, some teams might find it more useful than others. In particular, it is ideal for teams working on complex and long-lasting projects involving lots of stakeholders, tasks, milestones, and overlapping work.

Use our customizable RACI Matrix templates to discuss, communicate, and finalize roles for teams working on your project!

Our professionally designed RACI Matrix templates are available in Excel in .xlsx, .xltx, and .ods formats, as well as Google Sheets for cloud-based sharing and collaboration.