Concept / Term · Established
Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed
A responsibility matrix showing who does the work, who owns the outcome, who must be consulted and who must be kept informed.
Field note
RACI maps work to four roles: Responsible does the task, Accountable owns the outcome, Consulted contributes before decisions and Informed is kept aware.
The responsibility-assignment matrix became a project and governance tool for making decision rights visible across organisations with many participants.
Teams apply it selectively to important deliverables and decisions rather than producing an enormous matrix for every small activity.
Confusion is common when many people are involved but nobody has clear authority to decide or accept the result.
In a sentence“Engineering is Responsible for the migration; the service owner is Accountable.”