Understanding Who's Responsible on a Project

The Problem

We've all been there: something is going wrong on a project and you need to escalate the issue, but to who? It's easy to assume you, and everyone else, know who is supposed to do what, when, and who should be involved in different decisions. As a project coordinator, you probably do have an idea of the players involved. That doesn't mean everyone else does and when the time comes, you want to make sure the right people are making the call while combating the inevitable deluge of feedback coming from different stakeholders.

Stakeholders & Team Members

There can be many stakeholders on a project, and many team members working to make it all happen. The first step to building out an understanding of responsibility as a project coordinator is to make sure you have a complete list of stakeholders and a full list of the team. This could be members of your own team as well as members of a client's team. Managing across companies means there's an even greater chance to be confused about who's responsible.

Everyone Needs to Know Their Role

Making sure people understand their role is vital to a project success. It's important to getting the work done, but there are also other reasons everyone should be crystal clear about what they're responsible for on a project. Knowing who is responsible for what:

• enhances communication
• prevents confusion
• ensures accountability
• improves efficiency
• helps reduce conflict
• helps with project scaling
• supports good decision making

Getting it Done: The RACI Matrix

A RACI matrix is a simple, but powerful tool for project managers to clarify roles and responsibilities for everyone involved. RACI stands for:

• Responsible: the person who completes the task
• Accountable: the person who is ultimately answerable for the success or failure of a task
• Consulted: the people or domain experts who provide input during the task, but are not responsible for its completion
• Informed: the people who need to be kept in the loop, but are not active participants in the task

How to Build a RACI Matrix

A RACI should be built out before the work begins, but you should already have a loose understanding of project scope.

1. List the tasks and deliverables: the first step is to create a list of, for at least this stage of the project, the tasks we expect to accomplish. This could include broad descriptions like: scope and decide platform, design UX, or user acceptance testing.
2. Identify the roles: understand who you're including, these could be team members, stakeholders, managers, or external resources.
3. Assign labels: go through and assign labels to everyone involved using the format above.
4. Come back regularly: you should check your matrix any time you or anyone else on the team needs clarity on who is responsible for what. You should adapt or change your matrix as team members, stakeholders, and others may shift their roles during the project.

Here's what a RACI might look like:

Conclusion

Clarifying the roles and responsibilities of a team is crucial to success. If you want to succeed as a project coordinator, you should be able to read a RACI. If you want to excel, you should be able to create one. Think about how this might apply to a project you've been involved in recently. How would you identify those roles and classify them? Bring this to your next project and show your expertise.