RACI Matrix: Template, Filled Example, and the Rules That Make It Work

Quick answer: A RACI matrix is a grid that shows who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed for every task in a project. Tasks go down the left, people go across the top, and each box gets one letter. Every task needs exactly one A and at least one R.

Most RACI matrices you’ll find online are empty grids. They show you the shape and leave you to guess the hard part.

The hard part isn’t the shape. It’s deciding who gets the A when two senior people both think it’s theirs. And spotting when one person has quietly ended up accountable for everything.

This guide gives you three things. A filled example with real tasks and real names. The rules that make a matrix valid. And a counting method that finds the problems before the project does.

What Is a RACI Matrix?

A RACI matrix is a table that answers one question for every task in a project: who does what?

It’s also called a RACI chart, a RACI model, or a responsibility assignment matrix. They all mean the same thing.

The structure is simple:

• Tasks or deliverables run down the left side, one per row
• People or roles run across the top, one per column
• Each box gets one letter: R, A, C or I

That’s the whole idea. The value isn’t in the grid. It’s in the conversation you have while filling it in.

The four RACI roles — Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed — are the only letters you need to learn.

Why teams bother

Problem it solves	How
“I thought you were doing that”	Every task has a named R
Decisions that stall for weeks	Every task has exactly one A
Being asked for input too late	Consultees are named in advance
Being copied on everything	Some people are I, not C
Two people doing the same work	One R per task, agreed out loud
Nobody owning a gap	Empty rows become visible

The most useful thing a RACI matrix does is make disagreement visible early. Say two people both think they’re accountable for sign-off. You want to find that out in a 60-minute workshop, not in week nine.

What Do R, A, C and I Actually Mean?

Letter	Stands for	What it means	How many per task
R	Responsible	Does the work	One or more
A	Accountable	Owns it and signs it off	Exactly one
C	Consulted	Gives input before the work is finished	Any number, but keep it small
I	Informed	Told what happened, after	Any number

The plain-language version

• R — “I’m doing this.”
• A — “If this goes wrong, it’s on me. And I’m the one who says it’s finished.”
• C — “Ask me before you finalise it. I’ll have an opinion.”
• I — “Tell me when it’s done. I don’t need a say.”

The C and I distinction matters more than people think

C means two-way. You have to go and get their input, and then do something with it. Every C you add is a conversation someone has to schedule.

I means one-way. You send them the outcome. No reply needed.

Most bloated matrices are bloated with Cs. A good test: if you wouldn’t change the work based on what this person said, they’re an I, not a C.

What’s the Difference Between Responsible and Accountable?

This is the single most-confused part of RACI, and getting it wrong is what makes a matrix useless.

	Responsible	Accountable
Does the hands-on work	Yes	Not necessarily
Signs off that it’s done	No	Yes
How many per task	One or more	Exactly one
Answers “who’s building it?”	Yes	No
Answers “whose neck is on the line?”	No	Yes
Can delegate the work	No	Yes

An example

Task: write the quarterly report.

• Ayesha writes it. She is R.
• Daniel, the director, reads it, asks for two changes, and then says “yes, send it.” He is A.

Ayesha did all the work. Daniel owns the outcome. If the report goes out with the wrong numbers, Daniel can’t say “well, Ayesha wrote it.” That’s what accountable means.

Can one person be both R and A?

Yes, and it’s common on small projects. Write it as A/R in the box.

But be careful. If one person is A/R on most rows, you don’t really have a RACI matrix. You have a to-do list for one person. That’s worth knowing, and the counting method below will catch it.

The rule that does the most work

One A per task. Not zero, not two.

Zero A means nobody has final say, so the decision drifts. Two A means two people both think it’s their call. You get a standoff, usually discovered at the worst moment.

What Does a Filled RACI Matrix Example Look Like?

Here’s a complete matrix for a website redesign project. Eight tasks, six people, every box filled.

The people:

Person	Role
Priya	Project manager
Daniel	Marketing director (project sponsor)
Sana	Designer
Tomas	Developer
Ayesha	Content writer
Omar	Head of sales (stakeholder)

The matrix:

#	Task	Priya	Daniel	Sana	Tomas	Ayesha	Omar
1	Approve the project budget	R	A	I	I	I	C
2	Write the design brief	A	C	R	I	C	C
3	Design the page templates	A	C	R	C	I	I
4	Write the page copy	A	C	I	I	R	C
5	Build the pages	A	I	C	R	I	I
6	Test on mobile and desktop	A	I	C	R	C	I
7	Approve the final site	R	A	C	C	C	C
8	Launch and announce	A	C	I	R	R	C

Reading a few rows

Row 1 — approve the project budget. Priya is R because she prepares the budget and takes it to be approved. Daniel is A because he’s the sponsor and it’s his money. Omar is C because sales targets feed the business case. Everyone else is just told the number.

Row 7 — approve the final site. Notice Priya is R here, not A. She runs the approval: assembles the review, chases responses, makes the decision happen. Daniel signs off. Running an approval and giving an approval are two different jobs, and this row is where people most often put the letters the wrong way round.

Row 8 — launch and announce. Two Rs: Tomas does the technical launch, Ayesha writes the announcement. Two Rs on one row is fine when the work genuinely splits in two. Two As never is.

Why this example is more useful than a blank grid

Every row has exactly one A. Every row has at least one R. No box is empty. Those three things are what make a matrix valid, and an empty template can’t show you them.

What Are the Rules for a Valid RACI Matrix?

Check every matrix against these before you call it finished.

Row rules — read across

Rule	Why	What a failure looks like
Exactly one A	Final say must sit with one person	Two As: a standoff. Zero As: a drifting decision
At least one R	Someone must do the work	Zero Rs: the task quietly doesn’t happen
No empty boxes	Everyone’s involvement is deliberate	A blank means “we didn’t discuss this person”
The A is senior enough to actually sign off	Otherwise the A is fiction	An A who has to ask their own boss

Column rules — read down

Rule	Why	What a failure looks like
Nobody has too many Rs	One person becomes the bottleneck	One column full of Rs
Nobody has too many As	Accountability has concentrated	One person owning every outcome
Nobody has only Cs	They’re consulted constantly, contribute nothing	A pure-C column, slowing every task
Nobody has only Is	They may not belong on the matrix at all	An all-I column

The one rule people skip

Everyone named has to agree to their own letters, out loud.

A matrix you filled in alone is a guess. A matrix six people agreed to is a commitment. The difference shows up the first time something slips.

How Do You Audit a RACI Matrix by Counting?

This is the step almost nobody does, and it takes five minutes.

Count each letter down each column. Here are the counts for the example above:

Person	R	A	C	I	Total
Priya	2	6	0	0	8
Daniel	0	2	4	2	8
Sana	2	0	3	3	8
Tomas	3	0	2	3	8
Ayesha	2	0	3	3	8
Omar	0	0	5	3	8
Total	9	8	17	14	48

How to check your own arithmetic

Three sums must come out right, or you’ve miscounted:

• Every row totals the number of people. Here, 6.
• Every column totals the number of tasks. Here, 8.
• All four letter totals add to tasks × people. Here, 9 + 8 + 17 + 14 = 48, and 8 × 6 = 48. ✓
• The A total equals the number of tasks. Here, 8 As for 8 tasks. ✓

That last check is the fastest way to catch a missing or duplicated A. If your A count doesn’t equal your task count, you have a row with zero or two.

What the counts reveal

Priya has 6 of the 8 As. That’s the biggest finding in the table, and you can’t see it by reading the matrix row by row.

Is it wrong? Not automatically. On a small project the PM often does own delivery sign-off. But ask the honest question: does Priya actually have authority to say “this is finished” on six tasks? If she’d have to check with Daniel on any of them, that A belongs to Daniel. The matrix is telling a comfortable lie.

Omar has 5 Cs and no Rs or As. He’s consulted on five of eight tasks and does none of the work. Each of those Cs is a conversation someone has to arrange. Look at rows 4, 7 and 8 and ask whether sales input genuinely changes the copy, the sign-off and the announcement. If it changes one of them, downgrade the other two to I. You’ve just removed two bottlenecks.

Daniel has no Rs. Correct for a sponsor. A sponsor who picks up Rs has started doing the team’s job.

Tomas has the most Rs at 3. Check that against his actual capacity and the schedule. Three Rs is fine; three Rs that all land in the same week is not.

The counting rule of thumb

Signal	Threshold	What to do
One person’s As	More than half the tasks	Check they truly have sign-off authority
One person’s Rs	More than a third of tasks	Check the schedule for clashes
Cs on a single task	More than three	Downgrade some to I
A column of only Cs	Any	Ask if some should be I
A column of only Is	Any	Ask if they belong on the matrix

These aren’t laws. They’re prompts for a conversation, which is what a RACI matrix is for.

What Goes in the RACI Matrix Template?

Copy this and fill it in.

RACI MATRIX

Project:
Version:              Date:
Agreed by:            Review date:

KEY
R = Responsible   Does the work. One or more per task.
A = Accountable   Owns it, signs it off. EXACTLY ONE per task.
C = Consulted     Gives input before it's finished. Two-way.
I = Informed      Told the outcome afterwards. One-way.
A/R = the same person holds both.

MATRIX
| # | Task or deliverable | Name 1 | Name 2 | Name 3 | Name 4 | Name 5 |
|   |                     | Role   | Role   | Role   | Role   | Role   |
| 1 |                     |        |        |        |        |        |
| 2 |                     |        |        |        |        |        |
| 3 |                     |        |        |        |        |        |
| 4 |                     |        |        |        |        |        |
| 5 |                     |        |        |        |        |        |
| 6 |                     |        |        |        |        |        |
| 7 |                     |        |        |        |        |        |
| 8 |                     |        |        |        |        |        |

COUNT CHECK
| Person | R | A | C | I | Total |
|        |   |   |   |   |       |

Checks that must pass:
[ ] Every row has exactly one A
[ ] Every row has at least one R
[ ] No empty boxes
[ ] Total As = number of tasks
[ ] Each column totals the number of tasks
[ ] Each row totals the number of people
[ ] Everyone named has agreed to their own letters

OPEN DISAGREEMENTS
| Task | Who disagrees | About what | Resolved by | When |

CHANGE LOG
| Date | What changed | Who approved |

People leave out the count check and the change log. Those are the two parts that keep a matrix honest after week one.

How Do You Build a RACI Matrix in One Session?

Sixty minutes, one room or one call, everyone named present.

Time	Minutes	Step
0:00–0:05	5	Explain the four letters and the one-A rule
0:05–0:15	10	List the tasks down the left — agree the list before any letters
0:15–0:20	5	List the people across the top
0:20–0:40	20	Fill in the As first, one row at a time
0:40–0:50	10	Fill in the Rs, then Cs and Is
0:50–0:55	5	Count the columns and read out the totals
0:55–1:00	5	Record disagreements, agree who resolves them and by when

That totals exactly 60 minutes.

Four things that make the session work

Do the As first, not the Rs. Accountability is where the disagreement lives. If you fill in Rs first, everyone agrees pleasantly for twenty minutes and then the hard conversation arrives with ten minutes left.

Agree the task list before any letters. Otherwise you’ll be arguing about whether “testing” is one task or three while also arguing about who owns it. One argument at a time.

Keep rows to 8–15. Fewer than 8 and the matrix isn’t telling you much. More than 20 and the session won’t finish. Group small tasks into one row.

Count the columns out loud before anyone leaves. The counts always surprise somebody, and you want that surprise while the room is still full.

What to do with disagreements

Don’t resolve them all in the session. Write each one down with a named person and a date, and move on. A matrix with three honestly flagged disagreements is far more useful than one where you forced agreement at 0:48.

What Are the RACI Variants, and Do You Need Them?

Variant	Extra letters	What they add	Worth it when
RACI	—	The baseline	Almost always start here
RASCI	S = Support	People who help the R with resources or expertise without owning the work	Contractors or shared services materially affect delivery
RACI-VS	V = Verify, S = Sign-off	Separates checking the work from approving it	Regulated or safety-critical work where QA is a distinct gate
CARS	Communicate, Approve, Responsible, Support	Drops “informed” and makes communication an active job	Change-heavy work where comms is real effort
DACI	Driver, Approver, Contributor, Informed	Built for decisions rather than tasks	A one-off decision with unclear ownership
PARIS	Participant, Accountable, Review, Input, Sign-off	Splits review from sign-off, like RACI-VS	Multi-stage approval chains
RAPID	Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, Decide	A decision-rights model from Bain & Company	Recurring decisions that keep stalling

The honest advice

Start with RACI. Add a letter only when you can name the specific confusion it fixes.

Every extra letter costs you something real. More debate per box. More explaining to newcomers. More chance the matrix gets filled in wrong. A four-letter matrix everyone understands beats a six-letter matrix nobody reads.

The two upgrades worth making:

• Add S (Support) if contractors or another team do real work but shouldn’t own it.
• Use RACI-VS or PARIS if your approvals genuinely have two stages — someone checks it, then someone else approves it. In regulated work that split is usually mandatory, so the matrix should show it.

Everything else is usually a sign the task list needs splitting, not that the model needs more letters.

What Are the Most Common RACI Mistakes?

1. Two As on one row. The most common error, and the most expensive. It surfaces as a standoff at sign-off.
2. No A on a row. Nobody has final say, so the task drifts. Catch it with the count check: total As must equal total tasks.
3. Confusing R with A. R does the work, A owns the outcome. Approval rows are where this goes wrong most.
4. Too many Cs. Every C is a conversation. Four Cs on one task means four conversations before anything can finish.
5. Filling every box with C or I “to be safe.” The point is to reduce involvement, not to document everyone.
6. An A who can’t actually sign off. If they’d have to ask their own manager, the A belongs to the manager.
7. One person holding most of the As. Spotted only by counting columns.
8. Never updating it. A matrix from month one that nobody has touched is decoration.
9. Filling it in alone. A guess, not a commitment. Nobody is bound by a letter they never saw.
10. Too many rows. Thirty tasks produces a matrix nobody reads. Group them.

How Do You Fix Two Accountable People?

This happens in almost every workshop, so it’s worth a method rather than an argument.

Step 1 — check whether it’s really one task. Two people claiming accountability usually means two tasks wearing one name. “Approve the campaign” might be “approve the budget” (finance) and “approve the creative” (marketing). Split the row and both As become correct.

Step 2 — if it genuinely is one task, ask three questions.

Question	The A is…
Who pays for it?	Usually them
Who answers to the business if it fails?	Usually them
Who can say “stop” and have it stop?	Definitely them

If the same name comes up twice, that’s your A.

Step 3 — if the answers still split, escalate it. Don’t average it. Don’t write A/A. Take it to the sponsor and let them decide, and record the decision in the change log.

Step 4 — give the other person a strong C. Someone who expected to be A will not accept an I. A C with a documented commitment that their input is sought before sign-off is usually enough, and it’s honest about who decides.

The thing not to do: write both names as A to keep the peace in the room. You haven’t resolved the conflict. You’ve scheduled it for a worse day.

When Should You Not Use a RACI Matrix?

An honest list, because a RACI matrix isn’t free.

Situation	Why it’s not worth it	Use instead
Three people, one workstream	Everyone already knows who does what	A shared task list
A project under two weeks	The matrix takes longer than the clarity is worth	A named owner per deliverable
A self-organising agile team	Sprint ownership moves every two weeks; a static matrix goes stale fast	A definition of done, plus a RACI for the roles outside the team
One-off decisions	RACI is built around tasks	DACI or RAPID
Teams that won’t maintain it	A stale matrix is worse than none — people follow it and get it wrong	A simpler owner list

Where it earns its keep

• More than one team or department involved
• An external supplier or client in the mix
• Approval chains with more than one step
• Regulated work where sign-off has to be evidenced
• Any project where “I thought you were doing that” has already happened once

The pattern is boundaries. A RACI matrix is most valuable where work crosses from one group to another. It’s least valuable inside a small team that talks every day.

How Does a RACI Matrix Fit With the Project Charter and Kickoff?

Three documents, three jobs, in this order.

Order	Document	What it settles
1	Project charter	Why the project exists, its scope, budget and sponsor
2	RACI matrix	Who is responsible and accountable for each task
3	Kickoff meeting	Communicating both to everyone involved

The charter names the sponsor. The RACI matrix turns that into task-level detail. The kickoff tells everyone.

Build the matrix before the kickoff, not during it. A kickoff is a 60-minute meeting for 10 or more people. Filling in a RACI live will consume all of it. Bring a draft, confirm it in eight minutes, and resolve any disputes in a smaller session afterwards.

Record who the Cs and Is are in your stakeholder engagement plan, along with how each one prefers to be reached. The matrix says that they’re consulted; the engagement plan says how.

The matrix also feeds reporting. The A on each row is normally the person who reports its status. See the project control process.

How Do You Keep a RACI Matrix Up to Date?

Most matrices are accurate for about three weeks. Four habits fix that.

Version it. Put a version number and date on it. “RACI v3, 14 October” tells people whether they’re looking at the current one. A matrix with no date gets quietly ignored.

Review it at three triggers, not on a calendar:

Trigger	Why
Someone joins or leaves	Their column needs adding or reassigning
Scope changes	New tasks mean new rows and new As
A phase ends	Who’s accountable usually shifts between phases

Log changes. One line each: what changed, who approved it. When someone says “I was never accountable for that,” the log settles it in seconds.

Keep one copy. The moment a RACI matrix exists in two files, it exists in zero. Put it where the project documents live and link to it from everywhere else. A team collaboration plan is the usual place to record where that single copy sits.

Does your project have formal version control? Then the matrix is a configuration item like any other. See the configuration management plan guide.

What Tools Can You Build a RACI Matrix In?

Tool type	Good for	Watch out for
Spreadsheets	Counting columns automatically with COUNTIF	No change history unless you add one
Project management platforms	Linking each row to the real task	Role fields rarely map cleanly to R, A, C and I
Diagram and whiteboard tools	The build session itself	Easy to end up with a pretty picture nobody maintains
Documents	Keeping the matrix next to the charter and plan	Tables get unreadable past about eight columns

Four features that matter more than the brand:

• Automatic letter counts. In a spreadsheet, =COUNTIF(B2:B9,"A") down each column gives you the audit in seconds.
• Change history. So “who changed my letter?” has an answer.
• One canonical location. Not an attachment emailed round.
• Readable on a phone. Eight columns is already a lot on a small screen.

The spreadsheet route is usually the right first choice. The COUNTIF trick makes the audit automatic, and that alone earns it. Our project management tools page covers the wider set.

How Does Writegenic AI Fit In?

A RACI matrix generates a surprising amount of writing. The task list. The key. The agreed version everyone has to read. And the notes explaining why the letters landed where they did.

Writegenic AI can help you:

• Draft the task list from your scope or charter, as rows ready for letters
• Write the matrix key and instructions so newcomers don’t need a briefing
• Turn the agreed matrix into a short summary people will actually read
• Draft the workshop invitation and the agenda for the 60-minute session
• Write the change-log entries when roles shift mid-project
• Draft the C-to-I conversation — the awkward email telling someone they’ll be informed rather than consulted

It also helps with the documents around it. The project charter. The project scope. And the meeting agenda for the session itself.

Explore AI for project management or sharpen your instructions with the prompt generator.

Draft with the tool, keep the judgement. AI can produce a tidy matrix and a well-worded key in minutes. It cannot tell you that your head of sales will be offended by an I, or that the person you’ve marked A doesn’t really have sign-off authority and won’t admit it. Those are the two things that decide whether a RACI matrix works, and both of them live in the room, not in the grid.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Related reading:

• Project Charter Templates With Real Examples
• What Is Stakeholder Engagement Plan: Steps + Template
• Scope Management Plan: Guide + Template
• Team Collaboration Plan Generator
• Project Control Process: Steps + Template
• Agile Task Management and Planning