RACI Matrix Builder

What this tool does

CM8-223 builds a responsibility assignment matrix one row at a time: each row is one person's role on one activity. From those rows it draws the matrix views a project needs — who is carrying the work, which activities break the RACI rules, how the roles are distributed — and prints a report you can put in front of a project board or a kick-off meeting.

Everything runs inside this single file. There is no account, no upload and no network request of any kind, so names and project details never leave the computer you are using.

What a RACI matrix is

A RACI matrix answers the two questions that sink more projects than any technical problem: who is doing this, and who owns the result? It is a grid of activities against people, and each cell holds at most one of four letters — Responsible, Accountable, Consulted or Informed.

The matrix earns its keep at the boundaries. Inside one team, people usually know who does what. Between teams, between an organisation and its suppliers, or on anything cross-functional, two failure patterns appear again and again: a task everyone assumed someone else was doing, and a decision nobody felt entitled to make. A RACI matrix makes both visible before they cost anything.

This tool stores the matrix as one row per assignment rather than as a grid, because that is how you actually build one: activity by activity, person by person, each row confirmed with the person it names. The grid views — per activity and per person — are generated for you on the Reports tab.

R, A, C and I — precise definitions

The letters are worth defining tightly, because most broken matrices are broken by loose definitions.

• R — Responsible. Does the work. The person who writes the document, builds the thing, runs the analysis. An activity can have more than one R when the work is genuinely shared, but every R should be able to say exactly which part is theirs.
• A — Accountable. Owns the outcome. Answers for it, approves it, and is the one person who cannot say "that wasn't mine". The A does not have to do any of the work — the A makes sure it gets done and signs it off. One per activity. Not zero, not two.
• C — Consulted. Two-way communication before the work is finished or the decision made. A Consulted person's input is sought and can change the result. Consulting someone costs time on every cycle — spend it only where the input is genuinely needed.
• I — Informed. One-way communication after the fact. Informed people are told what was decided or delivered; they do not get a say. Being Informed is not a slight — it is the honest label for most of a project's audience.

The C/I boundary is the one people blur. The test is direction and timing: if the communication is two-way and happens before the decision, it is C; if it is one-way and happens after, it is I. Marking someone C when you mean I promises them influence you do not intend to give them.

The health rules

The Reports tab tests every activity against the conventions that make a matrix worth having. They are stated here as testable claims — the health check applies exactly these:

Rules 1 and 2 are close to universal. Rule 3 is a judgement call — the threshold is yours to set. Rule 4 is the one that separates a real matrix from a wish list: a RACI nobody has agreed to is just a spreadsheet of hopes.

RACI, RASCI and DACI

You will meet variants. RASCI adds S for Supportive — people who help the R without owning any part of the work; in this tool, record them as R with a note describing the split, or as C if their help is really advice. DACI (Driver, Approver, Contributor, Informed) is tuned for decisions rather than deliverables: the Driver is close to R, the Approver close to A. The mechanics are the same in all of them — one named owner, a clear doer, and a lean ring of everyone else. If your organisation already uses a variant, keep its vocabulary and use this tool's letters as the nearest match.

How to fill the matrix in

A RACI matrix written alone at a desk is a guess. The reliable way to build one:

• List the activities first, before any names. Activities should be outcomes with an end — "Approve budget", "Design pages" — not standing duties like "manage stakeholders". Ten to thirty activities is a normal range; past that, group them into phases and consider a matrix per phase.
• Assign the A for each activity first. It is the hardest letter and it forces the real conversation. If two people both want it, the activity is probably two activities; split it until each has one owner.
• Then the R, then C and I — sparingly. Every C you add is a person who can slow the activity down. Default to I and promote to C only when the input genuinely changes the result.
• Run it as a workshop with the people named in the room, then walk the matrix one activity at a time. The disagreements you surface are the whole point — every one of them is a dispute that would otherwise have happened mid-project.
• Confirm each row with its person. That is what the "Agreed with the person named" checkbox records. Tick it only when the actual person has actually accepted the role, and use the "Not yet agreed" tile as your to-do list until it reads zero.

Use the effort weight to record how much of the person's time each assignment takes. Role letters say nothing about workload — an A can be five minutes a week and an R can be a full-time job — and the weight is what lets the per-person table show who is actually overcommitted.

Reading the charts

Workload by person stacks each person's assignments by role. Look for two shapes: one person holding most of the R and A blocks (a single point of failure, and a bottleneck), and people who appear only as C or I (ask whether they need to be in the matrix at all).

Accountability health by activity draws a bar per activity and colours it red when the activity has no Accountable or more than one. Red bars sort to the top. The goal before circulating the matrix is simple: no red.

Overall role mix shows the balance of the four letters across every assignment. There is no single correct ratio, but the extremes are diagnostic: a matrix dominated by C is a committee, and a matrix dominated by I is a mailing list.

Assignments by phase counts rows per phase or workstream. A thin phase late in the plan usually means the planning stopped where the current work is — assign owners before the work arrives.

Common failure modes

• Everyone is Consulted. The most common failure. It feels inclusive and it makes every decision cost a meeting. If everyone is Consulted, nobody meaningfully is — demote most of them to I.
• The manager hoards the A's. One person Accountable for everything looks tidy on the chart and means accountability has not really been delegated at all. The workload chart makes this visible; the fix is a conversation, not a spreadsheet edit.
• A and R in one person on every row. Sometimes right for small teams, but if it is universal the matrix is adding nothing — it is an org chart wearing letters.
• Activities that are vague. "Own quality" cannot have a sensible R. If you cannot say when an activity is finished, split or rewrite it until you can.
• The matrix is written and never agreed. Rows that were never confirmed with the person named are the rows that fail when tested. The unconfirmed count exists to make that visible.
• The matrix is agreed and never updated. People leave, scope moves. Re-issue the matrix at each phase boundary — the date on each row tells you when its activity is due to matter.

Frequently asked questions

Can one person hold two letters on one activity? A person can be both A and R — common in small teams. Enter two rows, one per role, so the counts stay honest. Never give one person both C and I on the same activity; pick the one you mean.

Can an activity have several Responsible people? Yes, when the work is genuinely shared — but each R should know which part is theirs, and the note field is the place to record the split.

Should every activity have a C and an I? No. Many healthy activities are just one A and one R. Empty C and I columns are a feature, not an omission.

Do teams or roles count as a "person"? A role title ("Support desk lead") works well and survives staff changes. A whole team as an A does not — accountability shared by a team belongs to nobody. Name the team's lead instead.

What is the date field for? The decision date or deadline of the activity. It drives the date filter and lets the report show only the assignments that matter in the period you are looking at.

Printing and sharing

Print Report produces a report from whatever the current filter shows: the header you set on the Settings tab, the health tiles, all four charts, the health check and per-person tables, and the full assignment register. Print to PDF to circulate it. The scope line under the title states any filter in force — clear the filters before issuing anything described as the whole matrix.

A useful discipline: circulate the printed matrix once, collect corrections, tick the confirmation boxes as people agree, and only then declare it in force.

Saving your work

Assignments, settings and the report header are written to this browser's local storage as you type, and the toolbar shows the time of the last save. That storage belongs to one browser on one computer: another browser, a private window or a clean-up tool that clears site data will not have it.

Treat Export .json as the real save — one file containing everything, which Import .json restores anywhere. Export CSV gives you the assignment list for spreadsheet work and includes every filtered record, not only those drawn on screen. Reset asks twice, then erases everything this tool has stored. There is no undo.

Accuracy & disclaimer

This tool records what you enter and counts it. It cannot tell whether the right people are named, whether an Accountable person genuinely has the authority the letter implies, or whether a ticked confirmation box reflects a real conversation.

The health rules it applies are widely used conventions for making responsibility explicit — they are not laws, and organisations depart from them deliberately and successfully. The matrix records intent; it enforces nothing. What makes it binding is the agreement of the people named on it, and that happens in the room, not in the file.