COEPD – Center of Excellence for Professional Development Happy Learning
RACI MATRIX/CHART IN A PROJECT MANAGEMENT
The four key responsibilities Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed are called in short RACI. The RACI plays a key role to clarify and define roles and responsibilities in departmental or cross-functional tasks and processes. Though there are a number of alternatives to the RACI model, RACI chart has long been a popular and famous tool. RACI matrix is used to clarify employee R&R for each task and decision that takes place throughout the project. Clear communication and smooth workflows across all parts of a team is the key to a successful project. Hence it is a responsibility assignment matrix that describes the participations of different roles in the organisation.
Use of RACI Matrix: The RACI matrix/chart is useful for almost any project with any type of frame work. But, for some teams it is more useful and on top of all. This project is simple and fair as It only takes a few steps including very few stakeholders. The RACI matrix or chart will be useful for tough projects which may include stakeholders when the work is overlapping. A Project manager would clearly like to communicate with the team and hence creates a RACI matrix/chart to avoid missing those important detail.
The Four Key Responsibilities
Responsible: A person will be called as a responsible one when he does the work to complete the task or initiate and create the deliverable. So this responsible person will be designated the task as directly assigned. Each person should be assigned at least one task. developers or other creators are usually responsible parties.
Accountable: In every project there is one person in the RACI matrix called the accountable person. He reviews and ensures the work in the project. The person assigned the responsibilities of accountable person should be ensured that his job is to make sure that the team knows the expectations of the project and completes work on time.
Consulted: These Consulted parties are not working on a given task but their work will be affecting by the outcome of the task in the team. Consulted people are sometimes part of the task team. He will provide feedback and inputs on the work being done in the project. They are called the stakeholders in the outcomes of the project as it will definitely affect the current and future work. All BA, PM and all the team will consult these stakeholders much before the start of a task to get input on their needs. When creating a RACI matrix or RACI chart the Project manager may consult these people before starting each and every task. To avoid the clogging the process one consulted per task is a good practice.
Informed: these people are not the decision makers. These Informed personnel are looped into the progress of a project but not consulted. They simply need to know the progress. These are generally outsiders and do not fall in the team
Hence RACI is the back bone to the project that depends on all the quality of the requirements gatherings.
A PERFECT AND A GOOD REQUIREMENT
A requirement which is Complete, Consistent, Testable, Feasible, Modifiable and Unambiguous is called as a perfect Requirement.
Complete: there is no scope for assumption when a requirement is complete
Consistent: As an important aspect, all the inputs should be processed in a similar way.
Testable: A requirement is good and perfect when it is testable with either of the methods which are Walkthrough method, Inspection method, Testing method and the method of Inspection.
Feasible: The most important part of capturing requirements is feasible. The requirements gathering should be feasible.
Modifiable: These days requirements are never rigid they always tend to change by rising Change requests. So, the requirements should be changeable.
Unambiguous: All the requirements should have multiple interpretations. Otherwise, the requirement will become unambiguous.
As a BA the core competency would be gathering and writing good requirements to be involved in the creation of software products and digital tools. Most of the companies follow the same thumb rule. In case smaller, low budgeted and startups the project owner or the project manager will be doing the role of a BA in requirements gathering. Even though clearly defined requirements at the beginning of a project can help prevent future problems, Requirements gathering and their documentation is a huge task as It takes time and effort. Requirements gathering and their documentation requires input from multiple people in the project and outside the project (all the stakeholders). A skilled Business analyst create a useful communication tool that captures and communicates that was learned for others to use it. We need to follow one rule book in gathering and documenting so that any project can benefit from outlining requirements doesn’t matter how they are captured and documented. In every project the team or organization should use a process which meets the development environment.
If you use one or all of the following techniques though the basic process to gather is to ask the stakeholders, the requirements gathered will be most helpful and unambiguous.
- Questionnaire: Asking specific questions to the team
- Use case Scenarios: Explain how you think the project will be
- Mind mapping: visualize brainstorming
- Prototyping: Show what the product could look like
Requirements gathering is important because
- It improves stakeholder’s satisfaction
- Increases project success rate
- Costs of the projects will be reduced significantly
- For every project Requirements gathering is an important part of project. It Doesn’t matter Whether you’re interviewing stakeholders or team members inside the project to compile your list of project requirements.
- All the setbacks will be reduced when you communicate and collaborate with your stakeholders and your team members who share access to project from the start of the project to the finish of the project and reduce any chance of setbacks.
A few guidelines which can help the Business Analyst to gather perfect requirements.
- It will be wise thing to pick Interview Groups selectively by considering various factors while group selections
- Technical Maturity
- Business Process Knowledge
- Specialization
- Interest
- Departments
- Organization sections
- Time Availability.
- Introduce the project before starting the gathering to avoid misunderstandings
- BA should concentrate in depth on each question
- Don’t forget to take collaborative approach in gathering the requirements.
- Simple and understandable Questionnaire is good for the gathering.
- Ask sponsors and stakeholders to express the requirements
- Conducting the poll is another method to gather the requirements
