What Is a RACI Matrix?
RACI is a responsibility-assignment framework used to clarify who does what on a task or project. Each assignment is tagged with one of four roles:
- Responsible (R) — the person who does the work.
- Accountable (A) — the person who owns the outcome and answers for it.
- Consulted (C) — people whose input is required before decisions.
- Informed (I) — people who need to know what happened.
How This Tool Works
This tool is a role-balance check rather than a numeric calculator. It takes the total number of assignments in each of the four roles and reports the total assignment count, the accountability share (Accountable ÷ total × 100), and a balance status derived from the original heuristic: fewer Responsible than Accountable assignments signals the project is under-resourced, while more than 3× as many Responsible as Accountable signals it is over-resourced (too much work with too few accountable owners). Anything in between is labelled balanced.
These thresholds are a decision-support heuristic, not a formal scoring model, and are kept exactly as the original implementation. A healthy matrix usually has exactly one accountable owner per task; use the accountability share to spot work with no clear owner.
Why It Matters
A quick balance check surfaces common RACI anti-patterns — work with no accountable owner, or a single owner accountable for an impossible volume of work — before they create confusion.