A recent project controls process mapping and improvement exercise which involved the ever recurring need to be on the leading edge led Prof Process to take a look at what Wikipedia had to say about the leading edge.
The Internet is the predominant method of finding answers to your everyday work questions however this article about the Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) and Responsible Accountable Consult Inform (RACI) state the two are the same thing by different names. In the project management and controls space this is not the case…
A RAM is prepared by crossing the project organisation (I much prefer this to the business organisation) with the scope of work from the Work Breakdown Structure. This enables us to tell who in the project is accountable for that scope of work despite the R in RAM being responsible (see a later article by the Prof about how Accountability is not the only thing the RAM tells us). As you can see from the RAM diagram below it doesn’t help us with deliverables or who helps to review and produce these deliverables but defines who is accountable to deliver that scope.
A RACI as shown below can meanwhile be used during a project or during process improvement exercises. The aim of a RACI or one of its many incarnations (RASCI for example) is to ensure we streamline the delivery of products within a project or business process.
Hopefully this helps all the Wikipedia readers out there that are confused about that page.
