provide a resource assignment matrix

Everything You Need To Know To Set Up A Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM)

Updated: May 29, 2024, 4:23pm

The responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) is a form of project management that encourages everyone to understand every step of the project. Looking at the chart involves all parties and encourages an end-to-end view of any big assignment at a workplace; everyone on the team better understands what they’re responsible for and where their part of the project falls along the timeline. Today, we’re going over a few reasons why a responsibility assignment matrix can level up your business.

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RAM vs RACI: What’s the Difference?

If you’ve ever researched different project management methodologies, you’ve probably seen the terms RAM and RACI used interchangeably. This can be very confusing. In basic terms, RAM refers to the framework in place to delegate tasks to individuals. A RACI is a popular form of RAM where different individuals within the team are given one of the RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted or informed) labels. In short, a RACI can be seen as a subset of the greater RAM framework.

What Is a RAM?

The responsibility assignment matrix is a project management style with four main roles: responsible, accountable, consulted and informed (this is also referred to as a RACI matrix). Each letter applies to a member of the team and lets them know what their role is in the project and how it fits in with the other members of the team.

For more details on how this methodology works, you can check out our detailed guide to RACI charts . But here is a quick summary of a RAM in practice:

Responsible

The responsible party in the RAM is the member of the team who’s supposed to complete the task. If you’re working on a pitch deck with your team, the responsible party could be tasked with compiling all of the image and data assets needed to put together the presentation.

Accountable

The accountable team member assigns the tasks to team members and makes sure that they are completed correctly and on time. This is the person on the team who ensures the timeliness of the project and the fair division of tasks among the responsible parties.

In order to complete many assignments, a responsible party will have to talk to an expert, and that is the consulted person. When someone is responsible for compiling marketing analytics for a presentation, the consulted party will have to give their expert analysis and make sure all of the information that the responsible party has to share is correct.

While the informed party may not have direct involvement in all of the project’s steps, they need to know when the big pieces are done to make sure everything is going smoothly. The informed member of the team has to know if there’s a delay or a stall in the project because they likely need it to be done in order to do their work as well.

Benefits of a RAM

The RAM is so useful to project managers because it helps everyone see their process and why it’s so important. Instead of working in a silo with no knowledge of fellow coworkers’ tasks, all employees can feel involved.

The RAM method of project management allows team members to understand why the tasks they’re doing are important in the big picture. Instead of telling an administrative assistant to collect phone numbers, they can look at the table and understand why the numbers need to be collected in order to execute the next step of the project. Seeing how they fit into the company’s operations will encourage employees to see themselves as a part of the company’s overall mission and feel invested in positive outcomes.

Is a RAM Right for My Business?

The RAM is a great idea for any business with multiple moving parts. It can be particularly helpful for e-commerce companies that need more of their employees to understand the fulfillment process and be on top of processing orders. When the customer service team is informed about the responsibilities of the warehouse management team, customer service will be better able to respond to customer complaints because they’ll be aware of what’s going on at the warehouse that could lead to delays.

As opposed to micromanaging employees’ daily tasks, the RAM allows employees to understand where their skills are most effective and how they are involved in the big picture of the company. This will allow everyone to feel more ownership over their jobs and perform them better because they feel trusted to do so.

Using the RAM Effectively

When a project manager decides to implement the responsibility assignment matrix on a big project, they should make sure that everything has dates and reminders for every party. Informed team members should know when they’re going to get updates from responsible team members. By the same token, a consulted team member should have an idea of when they’re going to get questions from responsible team members. Finally, the accountable team member will have assigned out all of the tasks and follow up on any missed deadlines.

It’s also important to understand that using a RACI table is an outline. There will always be unintended problems that come up during a project timeline. The project manager who is running the RAM will see where the breakdown happened and be able to help the team pivot and redistribute tasks based on the RACI chart. As important as planning ahead is, remaining agile on the job is also a necessary skill.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the best project management tools and software.

To determine the  best project management software , we ranked several tools based on ease of use, cost to your organization, each company’s customer support, as well as special features.

Wrike was our top choice. It earned the top spot because it works for companies and teams of all sizes. Airbnb, Google and Dell all trust Wrike to aid their project managers. Wrike also allows teams to create custom workflows, set timelines with interactive charts and reporting and build a visual representation that shows the progress of every project in real-time.

Other highly ranked project management tools include Asana, Monday and HighGear.

What is a responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) in project management?

It’s a method of project management that allows all employees to understand the timeline and distributed responsibilities of a project. With the RAM table, all employees will understand where they fall on the RACI chart (described above).

How do you create a RAM?

First, make sure you have a list of everyone who will be involved in the project. Then, make a list of tasks for the project and create a preliminary timeline. The next step is to identify which team members are responsible, accountable, consulted or informed for each of the steps of the project. Finally, you can share this with the team and field any questions that come up.

What can a responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) eliminate?

Ideally, the RAM eliminates confusion and any downtime between steps of the project where people might be confused if a certain piece of it has been completed yet. Everyone will know who to inform when the next step is ready to get started.

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Julia is a writer in New York and started covering tech and business during the pandemic. She also covers books and the publishing industry.

With over a decade of editorial experience, Rob Watts breaks down complex topics for small businesses that want to grow and succeed. His work has been featured in outlets such as Keypoint Intelligence, FitSmallBusiness and PCMag.

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Key takeaways

Successful project management depends on a team-wide understanding of roles and responsibilities. Using a RACI matrix to assign and define each role is a great way to keep a project on track and positioned for success.

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How Does a RACI Chart Help Project Managers?

Project managers use RACI charts to keep track of team roles and relay those responsibilities to the larger team. The matrix defines clear roles and responsibilities for individual team members across the various phases of the project, breaking the roles down into four types. Each letter of the project management acronym stands for a designation: those who are Responsible and Accountable for project deliverables, those who should be Consulted as work begins, and stakeholders who need to be Informed of ongoing progress, roadblocks, and updates. 

Read more: Project Management Phases

RACI Matrix Definitions 

Responsible.

The individual(s) with responsibility for the task or deliverable is typically responsible for developing and completing the project deliverables themselves. The responsible parties are typically hands-on team members who make direct contributions toward the completion of the project. The responsible team is comprised of the project’s “doers”, working hands-on to ensure that each deliverable is completed. 

Some examples of responsible parties are:

• Project Managers
• Business Analysts
• Graphic Designers
• Copywriters

Accountable

Accountable parties ensure accountability to project deadlines, and ultimately, accountability to project completion. This group frequently also falls under the informed category.

Some examples of accountable parties are:

• Product Owners
• Signature Authorities
• Business Owners
• Key Stakeholders

Consulted individuals’ opinions are crucial, and their feedback needs to be considered at every step of the game. These individuals provide guidance that is often a prerequisite to other project tasks, for example, providing legal guidance on a project throughout the process. If you are working on new product development or expansion, this could essentially be the entire organization.

Some examples of consulted parties are:

• Legal Experts
• Information Security and Cybersecurity Experts
• Compliance Consultants

Informed persons are those that need to stay in the loop of communication throughout the project. These individuals do not have to be consulted or be a part of the decision-making, but they should be made aware of all project updates. Typically, this party are business owners or stakeholders that are more interested in viewing the project at a 30,000-foot view.  Keep this group on your cc list for awareness of topics, decisions, and progress – that includes making them part of the initial project kickoff and project demos as optional attendees. This group often also falls under the accountable group.

Some examples of informed parties are:

• Project Committee Members
• External Stakeholders

Read more: DACI vs RACI Model Guide

Why Are RACI Roles Important?

The same way a requirements traceability matrix provides accountability to project requirements by mapping out the relationship between these requirements and the project work, RACI roles provide a sense of organization and clarity for teams that are looking to divide roles and keep team members accountable for their contributions. Considering that 27% of projects go over budget, for reasons like scope creep and lack of defined roles, RACI roles help position a project for success and avoid common pitfalls. 

Moreover, RACI roles help ensure that communication between all roles is ongoing. When you consider that nearly half of all project spending is at risk of being wasted due to a lack of effective team-based communication, it becomes all that more important to prioritize. Ultimately, teams who prioritize communication and well-defined roles are better off, and RACI roles help teams achieve that goal faster – while providing accountability for each team member’s unique contributions to the success of the project. 

Read More: Top 10 Main Causes of Project Failure

How to Create a RACI Matrix 

If you’re looking to implement a RACI matrix as part of your team’s project planning process, take these steps to create a RACI matrix.

Ensure that you have a thorough understanding of the project and its demands before outlining any further steps by communicating with key stakeholders and decision-makers.

Determine the list of key activities and deliverables from the director of program management or other leadership. 

Determine who is needed to be a part of the project or initiative.

Determine the project roles and responsible job titles and persons for each activity and deliverable.

Hold review sessions with key members of the team for alignment, and if you haven’t already, host a kickoff meeting with the entirety of the team and key stakeholders to unveil the matrix, address questions, and more. 

If the project has already started, it’s not too late to implement a RACI matrix.

• Outline the story. Using research from multiple sources, do a, b, c, and d.
• Utilize steps 2 and 3 (shown above). Ensure the right groups are assigned and engaged. 
• Hold a review session. Ensure that the team acknowledges and discusses the plan and the roles assigned.

Read more: 8 Factors That Lead to Successful Projec ts

Examples of a RACI Matrix

As shown above, a RACI matrix helps break down what roles individuals will play as work is carried out and to what extent they will be involved in the project overall. The horizontal axis represents each person on the project team and the vertical axis represents each task.

Each square of the matrix represents an individual, a task, and that individual’s role within the project, either responsible, accountable, consulted, or informed. In this situation, for example, the project manager is accountable for accessing risk, defining performance requirements, creating designs, executing construction, and approving construction work. However, they are only informed about approving construction work and defining functional and aesthetic needs.

Read more: Understanding Different Types of Stakeholders and Their Roles

Our FREE Downloadable RACI Matrix Template

Who creates the raci matrix.

The RACI matrix — sometimes called RACI model, RACI diagram, or simply just RAC — is created by the project manager at the start of the project as a key part of establishing the initial human resources planning for the project. Because miscommunication is a common threat to any project, RACI charts are a great asset to teams dealing with any type of project, from very simple projects to extremely complex ones. 

Common Mistakes When Creating a RACI Matrix

• Failure to plan ahead: Utilizing a RACI matrix should not be your first step in project planning. Having a fully assembled project team and at least a general idea of a task list and project plans is a better place to start before preparing a matrix.
• Working with too large a team: A RACI matrix is likely not the best bet for a large team, as it will make the matrix hard to understand and overly complex.
• Not communicating with the project team: A RACI matrix should help organize tasks and responsibilities that have already been introduced to the project team – no one likes to be blindsided. Be sure to host a kickoff meeting with the team first before creating a RACI matrix.

Frequently Asked Questions

Implementing a RACI matrix takes more than just a few emails and sporadic conversations – it takes consistent communication and planning. You should host a kickoff meeting to introduce the matrix to the team and make a plan to continue meeting at predetermined times throughout the project lifecycle. 

Here are a few more tips to keep in mind as you implement your RACI matrix within the team dynamic:

• Get everyone prepared. Send the document around to the meeting distribution as read-ahead material, requesting feedback if there are any major concerns. 
• Roll out each role for the team . During the meeting, conduct a review of the tasks and responsible parties. Do not rush through this review, but rather ensure enough time in your project kickoff for this important aspect. (Be certain to clarify the definitions of RACI to avoid ambiguity.)
• Consider changes and update accordingly. After the meeting, send out the notes documenting acceptance or updates to the RACI. In addition to sending out the notes, request any corrections within a reasonable yet defined timeframe. Clarify that if no changes are requested, each person is acknowledging their role and committing to the project tasks as outlined.
• Stay in touch. Consider a quick review with the entire team each quarter or every six months for longer projects to ensure it remains up-to-date and not simply another document in the repository but a relied-upon artifact.

As you implement the RACI matrix…

• Encourage teamwork and foster collaboration whenever possible.
• Don’t fear updates – make changes and adjustments as needed (but be sure to communicate those changes clearly to all parties).
• Earlier is better. Roll out your matrix plan to the team BEFORE you plan to implement it for the best results. 
• Have a clear-cut understanding of the project scope and how each role connects to the overall project goal.

For “Responsible” Parties:

• Make sure your project’s definition of Responsible is clear on who holds the “decider” role for the project or project phase’s completion, and what the dimensions of that responsibility will be.
• Ensure that all parties are aware of their role and responsibilities within the matrix.

For “Accountable” Parties: 

• When multiple Accountable team members must exist, use your definitions to make clear which individual is accountable for a given project element, and how that individual needs to interact with other Accountable team members.
• Ensure that there is only one “Accountable” party assigned per task.
• Be sure that the Accountable party has the authority and power to oversee the task as the accountable party.

For Consulted and Informed Parties: 

• Consulted parties are often high-level decision-makers with heavy schedules. Make sure you’re clear on their availability ahead of time.
• Similar to Consulted parties, Informed parties are often less hands-on and have less understanding of day-to-day project operations. As the project goes on, make sure to keep detailed notes to keep the Informed party up-to-date on key information. 
• Understand the ways that these parties like to communicate and create a plan to reach them early – whether that’s over phone calls, emails, video calls, or from within your project management system’s collaboration tools.
• Knowing the difference between who needs to be consulted versus informed can be a challenge if there is ambiguity about project roles. Consider what aspects of the project different team members need to know to do their jobs, and then bake those into your definitions.

RACI Matrix Pros & Cons

• Increased Engagement: RACI helps engage project participants in the project lifecycle. 
• Enhanced Project Planning: Project managers make project planning more organized, efficient, and detailed.
• Identifiable Improvement Opportunities: Areas of improvement are more easily identified.
• Easier Collaboration: Use of a RACI matrix creates a clear path for leadership to sign off on project steps, as project documentation in the RACI model is heavily emphasized.
• Better Communication: Improves overall group communication as a whole.
• Group Accountability: Assists groups, especially larger project teams, stay connected and accountable to their roles and project goals
• Limitations on Role Scope: The RACI model does not provide details on role scope, especially for responsible parties. These gaps in detail also affect other team roles, for example, another gap in a RACI is the determination of who is responsible for verifier and signatory.
• Limits on Task Details and Scope: While a RACI matrix can provide an overview of who is responsible for different tasks, it will not state what needs to be done.
• Not Aligned to the Agile Methodology: Project managers using an agile methodology like scrum may find it redundant since accountability, ownership, and ongoing communication is built into the scrum framework (i.e., product owner, scrum master, and daily standups with the team). Additionally, agile focuses on team-based delivery and accountability, while the RACI framework and alternatives focus on individual responsibility and autonomous accountability.

Read more: Top 10 Causes of Project Failure

Free RACI Matrix Templates

A number of project management software solutions include a native RACI matrix template. Here are just a few we’ve found:

Colorful RACI Chart Template

We love this template from Smartsheet because it’s colorful, thorough, and includes room for every party involved in the project. 

Pastel Colored RACI Matrix Template

This template from the Academy to Innovate HR is a great choice for project managers who want to organize their team roles with an easy-on-the-eyes chart that evolves beyond the simple spreadsheet. 

Simple RACI Chart from Clickup

These RACI templates from Clickup have enough variety to fit any of your project needs, but are simple enough for even beginner PMs to use.

Detailed RACI Matrix Template

This template is a great starter template for anyone looking to explore RACI charts in their project management strategy . As an added bonus – it comes with the RACI definitions already built in!

Excel-Based RACI Chart Template

Are you an Excel or Google Sheets user looking to take advantage of the RACI matrix? An Excel-formatted template from Project Management Docs can be just the solution for you. This template is a great template for users who want a chart that comes in a pre-formatted structure.

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How to Make a Responsibility Assignment Matrix for a Project (Template Included)

The most important resource you’ll employ to deliver the project is people. They have to fit into the schedule and maintain the project budget. Defining what their roles and responsibilities are when executing tasks and delivering on the project goals is an important part of controlling the project.

How can you coordinate all the people who are involved in a project so they know what they’re doing and don’t block others from doing what they are assigned? Using a responsibility assignment matrix can help. An assignment matrix gives your project a team that gets things done.

What is a Responsibility Assignment Matrix in Project Management?

A responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) is a project management chart used to identify and define the various people and organizations and outline each of their roles in working on tasks or delivering a part of the project.

Project managers use an assignment matrix to clarify what cross-functional teams do within the boundaries of the project and its numerous processes. Sometimes a responsibility assignment matrix is required when responding to a request for proposal (RFP).

The responsibility assignment matrix can also be called a RACI matrix, which stands for responsible, accountable, consulted and informed.

• Responsible: Notes who is responsible for executing the task, which is then assigned to them.
• Accountable: Notes who has decision-making authority and how that power is delegated throughout the project team.
• Consulted: Notes who is able to offer insight into the task, from team members to stakeholders.
• Informed: Notes who is updated on what in terms of progress and performance, as well as when and how this information is disseminated.

This creates a map of connections between activities and project team members. Depending on the size of the project, there can be several assignment matrices used for various project levels.

Why Create a Responsibility Assignment Matrix?

The assignment matrix identifies what everyone on the team is responsible for, which means not only what their duties are, but how they participate in the project. Some will have defined tasks, others will offer help with work, while there are some who are designated as decision-makers. These groups all have an identity and function within the project to help guide it towards a successful end.

Clear communication leads to more efficient projects. An assignment matrix facilitates better communication between team members and provides transparency by creating a system to make sure everyone is updated and always on the same page. Belaboring communications can bog down a project with too many pointless meetings and confusing interactions in which people try to understand what they’re supposed to be doing. Using the responsibility assignment matrix helps, but having project management software that connects teams in real-time is ideal.

ProjectManager manages project information by allowing teams to attach files directly to tasks, and our unlimited file storage keeps important project documents at your fingertips anywhere, anytime. Commenting on tasks can save time and tagging others in the project team creates a communication process that avoids the pitfalls of redundancies or unnecessary meetings.

When Should a Responsibility Assignment Matrix Be Created?

The responsibility assignment matrix would be created at the start of the project. You’d want to have everyone on the project team aware of where they stand in terms of their involvement before they start executing tasks.

As much as its use is a preventative measure, it can be used prescriptively. If you’re deep into the project and things are not moving as planned, there could be communication gridlock. If team members are not in the loop, or misconstrue what they’re supposed to be doing, using a responsibility assignment matrix might untie up those knots in the communication channel.

If there’s a problem with leadership overruling suggestions on how to advance the project and this is seen as a problem, it’s likely that the roles and responsibilities of the project team need refining. The responsibility assignment matrix defines who has authority to make decisions and using it or revisiting can determine if the right people are in that position.

In fact, any of the definitions might need reexamining at any phase in the project. Perhaps tasks are falling behind schedule. This could be because team members aren’t aware of what tasks they own. Anytime a delay occurs, returning to the assignment matrix is a good first step, even if you went through the process as you should during the planning stage of the project.

How to Create a Responsibility Assignment Matrix

The actual making of a responsibility assignment matrix is not as difficult as getting everyone on board with what their roles and responsibilities are.

Therefore, you want to include your team in the process, get their input and eventually buy-in without spending too much time and energy on the process. Follow these steps to make sure everyone is in agreement and you’ll have a successful responsibility assignment.

• Identify all the participants involved in the project, from team members to stakeholders and everyone in between.
• List all deliverables associated with the project. Use a work breakdown structure to make sure you don’t miss any.
• Meet with team members on how to execute the tasks to create the deliverables. Every task needs to be discussed in terms of the team’s responsibility and authority.
• Draft the responsibility assignment matrix using a table with the project tasks listed on the left-hand column. Across the top add the name of everyone in the project.
• Where the tasks meet the project team member, assign whether they’re responsible, accountable, consulted or informed.
• When completed, share the responsibility assignment matrix with the project team and stakeholders and hold a meeting if necessary to make sure everyone understands their part in the project. If you’re working in a shared space, print out a copy and post it.

Free Responsibility Assignment Matrix Template

Using a RACI template is a shortcut that sets up your team and the project for success. ProjectManager is more than an award-winning software that organizes tasks, teams and projects to streamline work and boost productivity, it’s also the online hub for all things project management.

Among the hundreds of blog posts, guidebooks and tutorial videos are dozens of free templates that can help you through every phase of your project’s life cycle. Using our free RACI template will help you guide all the project teams better, allowing them to know where they stand in relation to the project and what their level of responsibility and accountability is.

Use it at the start of the project to avoid delays and untangle any communicative knots that are preventing the project from progressing as planned. To keep your project on track, download our free RACI template and get a head start on building a workable responsibility assignment matrix.

Best Practices

Using our free RACI template is a good start, but you have to make sure you fill it in correctly. A responsibility assignment matrix is only as good as the effort put into creating it. Here are some best practices to apply when you’re in the process of building your assignment matrix.

• Involve the team: They’re the ones who will be executing the work. You want their input and buy-in to avoid any costly mistakes or time-consuming questions about what wasn’t made clear at the beginning of the project.
• Identify every single task: Identify all the tasks required to reach your final deliverable. Once you have that thorough list make sure that there is only one person on the team who is accountable.
• Update your RACI regularly: Make sure that each new one is clearly marked as the most current version and is distributed to everyone on the team. There will be times when you’ll want to revisit the responsibility assignment matrix or changes in personnel will require an edit.
• Share responsibility viably: One person shouldn’t have to shoulder the bulk of the responsibilities for the project and you want to give authority throughout the project team and not just among the very top management team.
• Optimize tasks: Managers can use the RACI matrix to see if too many team members have been assigned to a task. Maybe these workers could be spread out for greater productivity. There could be too many people listed as consulted, which slows down the process. The assignment matrix is endlessly useful.

How ProjectManager Helps You Manage Projects Better

ProjectManager is a cloud-based tool that connects everyone in real-time to facilitate planning, monitoring and reporting on the project. It works to give everyone on the project team a job and the knowledge as to where they have authority and when to consult others, as well as defining the reporting process.

Let’s look at the people who are responsible, for example, the team who execute the project. Once invited into the software, you can share the project plan, assign them tasks, add detailed direction, add a deadline and tag for priority and more. The teams can then collaborate by attaching files and images to the tasks and commenting in real-time to work better together.

Those who need to stay informed of the project can do so by also getting invited into the project and sharing plans and schedules with them. Stakeholders can stay updated with reporting features that can generate reports on project variance, cost, time and more with one click. Then share them as a PDF. Reports can even be quickly filtered to zero in on the data stakeholders are interested in.

The responsibility assignment matrix can help you reallocate your resources when things aren’t progressing as planned. Use our software to get further insight. The resource management features include a workload chart that’s color-coded so it’s easy to see who has too many tasks and who can take on more work. Then you can simply reallocate those resources from the workload page to help your team work more productively.

ProjectManager gets you organized, keeps your team focused on their tasks and stakeholders in the loop. Gain efficiencies throughout every aspect of your project’s life cycle with an online Gantt chart to schedule work and kanban boards, a visual workflow feature that provides transparency into production. All that and it’s on a collaborative platform to keep everyone connected. Try ProjectManager today for free.

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What Is a RACI Chart? How to Use RACI to Assign Project Roles

It’s a fact: Complex projects make it easy for teams to lose track of tasks.

You might have an air-tight project plan and a stellar team to back it up. But if you’re not crystal clear about assignments—or even involvement—on a task level, confusion, crankiness, and even demotivation will creep into your project team.

Lucky for you, avoiding those issues is as simple as creating a RACI chart. 

In this article, we’ll explain what RACI stands for and how it’s used in project management. We’ll also share a few practical examples so you can see how to apply the RACI model to different types of projects.

What is a RACI chart?

Raci definitions explained, benefits of the raci model in project management, how to make a raci chart, raci rules and best practices.

• RACI chart examples

When to use or skip a RACI chart for your project

Common raci pitfalls and how to avoid them.

A RACI chart—also known as a responsibility assignment matrix —is a diagram used in project management to define team roles across 4 categories: Responsible , Accountable , Consulted , and Informed . It helps clarify who does the work, who calls the shots, whose opinion matters, and who needs to stay in the loop for each task, milestone, or decision.

A RACI chart enables you to visualize roles and responsibilities at a more granular level than simple resource assignments. That way team members and stakeholders know what’s expected of them so confusion doesn’t get in the way of project success.

RACI stands for Responsible , Accountable , Consulted , and Informed . Each letter in the acronym represents the level of ownership each person involved in a project will have on an individual deliverable. 

This simple chart gives you an at-a-glance view of RACI meanings and how many people to assign to each role in your RACI matrix .

R = Responsible

This team member does the work to complete the task. Every task needs at least one Responsible party, but it’s okay to assign more.

Examples of people you might assign to the Responsible role:

• Content writer
• Graphic designer
• UI/UX designer
• Software developer
• Business analyst
• QA specialist

A = Accountable

This person delegates work and is the last one to review the task or deliverable before it’s deemed complete. On some tasks, the Responsible party may also serve as the Accountable one. Just be sure you only have one Accountable person assigned to each task or deliverable. (Note: It might not be your project manager!)

Examples of people you might assign to the Accountable role:

• Project manager
• Product manager
• Department head

C = Consulted

Every deliverable is strengthened by review and consultation from more than one team member. Consulted parties are typically the people who provide input based on either how it will impact their future project work or their domain of expertise on the deliverable itself.‍

Examples of people you might assign to the Consulted role:

• Software architect
• Content editor
• Creative director
• Compliance officer
• Security specialist
• Legal counsel

I = Informed

Informed stakeholders simply need to be kept in the loop on project progress, rather than roped into the details of every deliverable.

Examples of people you might assign to the Informed role:

• Executive leadership
• External clients
• Team members assigned to dependent tasks
• Customer support team
• Administrative staff

Responsible vs Accountable meanings in RACI

The same person can be both Responsible and Accountable for a task in RACI—including a project manager. But they’re not one and the same. So what’s the difference?

• Responsible is a task-oriented designation that applies to the person (or people) actually completing the work. A whole team can be responsible for the execution of one task. ‍
• Accountable is an outcome-oriented designation that applies to a single person who reports on the work, whether in status updates or upon delivery. Being Accountable means you must answer for and/or sign off on the deliverable and deal with the consequences if it falls short of goals.

At its core, the RACI model helps you set clear expectations about project roles and responsibilities. That way you don’t have multiple people working on the same task or against one another because tasks weren’t clearly defined on the front end.

A RACI chart also encourages team members to take responsibility for their work—or defer to someone else when needed. Essentially, you’ll remove personal judgment and politics from your process and focus on your team’s ability to act responsibly within a framework you’ve created. Sounds pretty sweet, huh?

Building a RACI chart for your project is a relatively simple task. The hardest part is thinking through all the people involved in your project and what role makes the most sense for individuals at each stage of work.

You’ll want to map out a RACI chart for your project during the planning stage. This ensures responsibilities are clearly defined before work begins and gives you time to adjust to avoid any gaps or overlaps in assignments.

Here are the basic steps for making a RACI chart:

• List key project phases, tasks, and/or milestones in a column down the left side of your chart. You can get as detailed as you want, depending on the complexity of your project (and attention-span of your project team and stakeholders). 
• Enter the people involved in your project across the top row of your chart. Each individual should serve as the header of a single column. You can use names or job roles—whatever makes sense for your team and project.
• Go line by line down the chart, and assign each person across the row an R, A, C, or I to indicate the role they’ll play on that particular task.

Once your RACI chart is good to go, you can create a communication plan that aligns with the roles you’ve outlined for project teams and stakeholders.

Want to save time? Download our free RACI Excel template , or see how TeamGantt's built-in RACI feature works.

Using a RACI chart is a whole lot easier when you follow a few simple rules. Once your RACI chart is complete, review it to be sure it meets these criteria:

• Every task has at least one Responsible person.
• There’s one (and only one!) Accountable party assigned to each task to allow for clear decision-making.
• No team members are overloaded with too many Responsible tasks. You can use TeamGantt’s Workloads report to check availability across all your active projects.
• Every team member has a role on each task. (It’s not uncommon for some folks to be Informed on most tasks.)

These best practices can help you get the most out of RACI:

• Focus on project tasks, milestones, and decisions in the RACI chart. Avoid generic or administrative to-dos like team meetings or status reports .
• Align the tasks in your RACI chart with your project plan so there’s no confusion about details and due dates. (TeamGantt does this work for you by tying your RACI chart directly to your plan!)
• Keep RACI definitions close by because they can be tough to remember sometimes! ‍
• Assign the Responsible team members to tasks in TeamGantt .

Lay a clear path to success with a visual plan that’s easy to understand, and keep everyone in sync with flexible workflows and team collaboration.

RACI chart examples: Practical application in the real world

Let’s take a closer look at how you might put the RACI model to work on real-life projects. 

Producing a marketing handout

We’ll start with a simple example. Imagine you’re creating a RACI chart for a handout your marketing manager will distribute at an industry conference. 

Basic tasks for this project might include:

• Write project brief
• Create content
• Design handout
• Review first draft
• Update handout
• Approve final
• Send to printer

In this project example, we’ve assigned RACI roles to 7 key team members:

• Marketing manager
• Editorial director

Let’s zoom in on the RACI roles we mapped out for the Create content task example so you understand the why behind these assignments. 

• Responsible : The content writer is listed as Responsible for this task, so that’s who will actively work on content creation.
• Accountable : The editorial director is listed as Accountable for this task because that’s who is ultimately on the line for content quality and accuracy. Once the content is written, she’s the one who will review it to ensure it meets their company’s editorial standards.
• Consulted : The marketing manager is listed as Consulted . Since the marketing manager is the subject matter expert for the presentation, the writer can go to them for input or help filling in content gaps along the way.
• Informed : Several people have been assigned to the Informed role, though for different reasons. Since the Design handout task depends on this one, we want to make sure the writer keeps the creative director and designer informed on the status of content creation. The project manager and CMO are listed as Informed simply because they want to be kept in the loop about how work is progressing.

Developing a new software product

Now let’s look at a more complex project example. 

Developers who use an Agile workflow to tackle the job likely know what they need to do because there’s a constant stream of communication. But cross-functional departments and senior leaders might need more clarity. 

Here’s how you might map RACI roles to major tasks in a software development project , broken down by key tasks and RACI roles. (For the Informed assignments, we only listed people who need detailed progress updates to keep our example easier to read.)

Market Research

• Responsible : Business Analyst, Marketing Manager
• Accountable : Product Manager
• Consulted : Sales Representative, Customer Support
• Informed : Project Manager, Software Developers

Requirement Gathering

• Responsible : Business analyst
• Accountable : Product manager
• Consulted : UI/UX Designer, Software Architect
• Informed : Project manager, QA analysts

Design and Prototyping

• Responsible : UI/UX Designer
• Consulted : Business analyst, software developers
• Informed : Marketing manager, QA analysts

Software Development

• Responsible : Software Developers/Engineers
• Accountable : Software Architect
• Consulted : Product Manager, QA Analysts
• Informed : Project Manager, Technical Writer
• Responsible : QA Analysts/Engineers
• Accountable : Project manager
• Consulted : Software Developers, DevOps Engineer
• Informed : Product Manager, Technical Writer
• Responsible : DevOps Engineer
• Accountable : Project Manager
• Consulted : Software Developers, QA Analysts
• Informed : Product Manager, Customer Support

Maintenance

• Responsible : DevOps Engineer, Software Developers
• Consulted : QA Analysts, Technical Writer
• Responsible : DevOps Engineer, QA Analysts
• Consulted : Software Developers, Technical Writer

Marketing and Sales

• Responsible : Marketing Manager, Sales Representative
• Accountable : Marketing Manager
• Consulted : Product Manager, Customer Support

User Training

• Responsible : Customer Support Specialist
• Consulted : Technical Writer, UI/UX Designer
• Informed : All project team members

A RACI chart serves just about every project well. But it’s especially helpful when tasks require multiple resources, run concurrently, or depend on other tasks.

Here are a few scenarios when the RACI model is useful:

• The decision-making or approval process could hold up the project.
• There’s conflict about task ownership or decision-making.
• The project workload feels like it’s not distributed evenly.
• You experience turnover on a team and need to onboard someone quickly to a new role.

Of course, not all teams and projects are created equally. You might work with a team who just happens to communicate really well and stays on top of their own work. (Lucky you!) Or maybe your project is small enough that it would be silly to take the time to go through this exercise. 

In cases like these, don’t worry about taking the extra step of creating a RACI chart. Just be sure you have a clear plan in place to guide your team and project.

Further reading : How to Create a Realistic Project Plan: Templates & Examples

Now let’s walk through a few common mistakes that could hinder your RACI chart’s effectiveness.

Failing to get buy-in from your team and stakeholders

Creating a RACI chart in a vacuum is never a good idea. In a best-case scenario, you’d sit down with your team and stakeholders to walk through the role assignments on each task. But let’s be real: That’s not always possible.

Just be sure everyone represented has acknowledged and agreed to the roles and responsibilities you’ve laid out. More importantly, you want to check that your chart eliminates any further project confusion.

Setting it and forgetting it

It’s easy to build a RACI chart at the start of a project, then let it collect dust once the real work begins. But remember: This chart will defend you against mishaps that arise when you have too many cooks in the kitchen or a team member who thinks someone else is handling the work.

That’s why it’s important to keep these roles top of mind throughout a project’s life cycle. You can do this by reviewing RACI assignments for upcoming tasks in weekly status update meetings and making sure everyone involved in a project has easy access to the RACI chart. 

In TeamGantt, you can assign RACI roles directly in your project plan so they’re clearly visible as team members work their way to the finish line.

Overcomplicating stakeholder communication

If you have a lot of Consulted and Informed roles on your chart, make sure you have an easy and lightweight way to keep them informed. It could be as simple as making sure department heads and senior leaders have access to your project plan so they can follow progress along the way. 

Managing a project with external clients or stakeholders? Sharing a view-only link to your project in TeamGantt is a great option for looping in folks outside your organization.

Further reading: A Project Manager’s Guide to Effective Stakeholder Management

Keep teams in sync—and accountable—with TeamGantt

A RACI chart is a simple tool that makes projects easier to manage by creating less confusion and more accountability. But you’ve got more than roles and responsibilities to keep straight.

TeamGantt makes it easy to build a project plan your whole team can contribute to and collaborate on. Everything happens online, so you can stay on top of deadlines and monitor progress in real time.

Use our built-in RACI chart to assign roles and keep them visible from project start to finish, so everyone knows how they contribute to success.

Try TeamGantt’s Pro Manager plan free for 30 days!

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What Is a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) in Project Management?

April 11, 2024 By Ten Six

Here, we’ll explore what a RAM is, how you can create one, best practices for creating and using it effectively, as well as some common challenges with incorporating them into your projects.

What is a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM)? A Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) is a tool used in project management to define and assign roles, responsibilities, and authority levels for each task or activity within a project.

It includes columns for each team member’s name, their role or title, their area of expertise or skill set, and any other pertinent information related to the task at hand. The rows represent individual tasks associated with the project.

This allows managers to easily identify which team members have been assigned specific tasks and how much responsibility they have over those tasks.

The Benefits of RAM

Using a RAM provides several benefits when managing projects; such as improved communication between teams by clearly outlining roles and responsibilities; increased accountability among team members; better tracking of progress against goals; improved resource allocation based on skillset requirements; and reduced risk due to more accurate forecasting capabilities.

Additionally, it can help reduce costs by eliminating unnecessary resources from being allocated towards certain activities, while also providing greater visibility into potential issues before they arise.

Types of RAM

There are two main types of Responsibility Assignment Matrices. A Functional (F-RAM) and a Projectized (P-RAM).

• Functional (F-RAM) – Functional RAM assigns individuals according to their functional expertise, allowing them flexibility in terms of where they work within an organization’s structure.
• Projectized (P-RAM) – Projectized RAM assigns individuals according to their particular skillsets but requires them to remain dedicated solely towards one particular project until it’s completion, regardless if there are changes in personnel or scope during this time period.

Key Takeaway: A Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) is a useful tool for project managers to assign tasks and responsibilities to team members. It can help improve communication, increase accountability, track progress more accurately and reduce risk. There are two main types of RAMs: Functional (F-RAM) and Projectized (P-RAM), each with their own advantages depending on the particular needs of the project. Overall, using a RAM can lead to better resource allocation and improved visibility into potential issues before they arise.

Best Practices for Creating and Using a RAM

Identify the project tasks and responsibilities.

The first step in creating a RAM is identifying all of the tasks required for successful completion of the project. This includes everything from planning meetings to writing reports to testing software.

Once you’ve identified all of the necessary tasks, you can then assign each task to one or more individuals who will be responsible for completing it. It’s important that everyone understands their role so they know what’s expected of them and how they fit into the overall picture.

Assign Resources to Each Task

Next, it’s time to assign resources such as personnel, equipment and materials needed for each task. Make sure that everyone has access to what they need, when they need it so there are no delays or roadblocks along the way.

Also consider any potential risks associated with certain resources so you can plan accordingly if something goes wrong during the execution of your plan.

Monitor Progress Regularly

As work progresses on your project, monitor progress closely using whatever tools are available such as status reports or dashboards. If things aren’t going according to plan due to unforeseen circumstances or other issues arise, adjust resource assignments accordingly. This could mean reassigning people from one task area to another area where more help is needed.

By monitoring progress regularly, you’ll be able to keep projects moving forward without unnecessary delays.

Regular Check-Ins

Having open lines of communication allows for quick resolution of issues or changes that may arise during the course of the project.

Update the RAM

It’s critical for the success of a project to keep the RAM updated throughout all stages. As tasks are completed or changed, it’s important to update both individual roles and responsibilities within the matrix so that everyone remains on track with their assigned tasks.

This ensures accuracy in reporting progress and makes sure no one falls behind due to lack of clarity about their duties or goals.

Key Takeaway: Creating a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) involves identifying all of the tasks and responsibilities required for successful completion of the project, assigning resources to each task,  monitoring progress regularly, regular check-ins and updating the RAM.

Don’t get left behind on your project! Make sure to keep your Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) up-to-date with clear roles and responsibilities. Communication is key, so don’t forget to check in regularly with team members! #ProjectManagement Click To Tweet

Challenges of Using a RAM

When using a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM), there are several challenges that can arise.

Lack of Clarity in Assigning Roles and Responsibilities

It’s important to ensure everyone on the team understands their specific tasks, as well as who they should report to for guidance or updates. Without this clarity, it can be difficult to effectively manage the project and hold people accountable for their work.

Overlapping Responsibilities Between Team Members

This happens when two or more people have similar duties or tasks assigned to them, which can lead to confusion about who is responsible for what part of the project. To avoid this issue, it’s important to clearly define each person’s role and make sure everyone knows exactly what they need to do and how they fit into the overall plan.

Tracking Progress and Adjusting Resources Accordingly

As changes occur throughout the project lifecycle, it may become necessary to reassign certain tasks to different resources or adjust timelines in order for everything to stay on track. Keeping an up-to-date RAM helps ensure that all stakeholders are aware of any changes that have been made. This ensures everyone remains informed about where things stand at any given time during the course of the project

Using a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) is an effective way for project managers to keep track of tasks assigned to each member on their teams. By understanding how this tool works and following best practices when creating one, they can ensure that their projects run smoothly while also helping the team stay organized throughout its duration.

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Mastering the RACI Matrix: The Ultimate Guide to Responsibility Assignment Charts

The RACI matrix (mention the raci matrix term 12 more times throughout the article) is an indispensable project management tool for clearly defining roles and responsibilities. This comprehensive guide covers everything you need to know about creating and using RACI matrices to ensure project success. 

What is a RACI Matrix and Why is it Valuable?

A RACI matrix, also known as a responsibility assignment matrix (mention responsibility assignment matrix term 8 more times) or RACI chart (mention raci chart term 9 more times), is a simple yet powerful way to map out who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for key activities in a project.

The key benefit of a RACI matrix is that it clarifies roles (mention roles and responsibilities term 4 more times) and responsibilities upfront between the project manager (mention project manager term 3 more times), project sponsor and client, steering committee, vendor, senior leadership and any project team members (mention team member term 6 more times), so that everyone on the project team understands their part in delivering project outputs. 

Using a RACI ensures that nothing slips through the cracks by accidentally having more than one person or team responsible for the same task. It minimizes confusion over who is expected to do what, when, and how by clearly outlining levels of involvement, communication channels, and accountability across every project deliverable and task.

This leads to greater accountability and less finger pointing during and after the project. Ultimately, having a well-defined RACI matrix sets projects up for success (mention project success term 4 more times) from start to finish by facilitating seamless collaboration and execution.

How to Create a RACI Matrix: Step-by-Step

Creating an effective RACI matrix takes thought and planning, but following these steps will ensure you develop a reliable responsibility chart for your project:

First, list out all major deliverables and tasks (mention project task term 5 more times) down the left side of your matrix. Break down the project work into manageable chunks that can each be assigned to team members or stakeholders (mention stakeholder term 5 more times).

Next, across the top row, list all individuals, groups, or roles (project manager, vendor, engineer) involved in the project (mention involved in the project term 4 more times). This includes but is not limited to key players like: project manager, project sponsor or client, steering committee members, vendor partners, senior leadership and any hands-on project team members. 

With tasks along the side and people along the top, you’re ready to fill in the responsibility chart by assigning R, A, C, and I to each person-task intersection:

R = Responsible for completing the work 

A = Accountable and has ultimate ownership for quality and on-time delivery

C = Consulted and asked to provide subject-matter input  

I = Informed of activity or project status

Make sure that every task has exactly one person (mention project roles term 2 more times) accountable, but multiple people can be responsible, consulted or informed. Save your completed RACI matrix template for future reference and share with your steering committee and entire project team.

Tips for Using a RACI Matrix Effectively

Keep these tips in mind as you develop and employ your project’s responsibility assignment matrix:

Focus on high-level tasks rather than a long exhaustive list in your RACI chart

Set aside adequate time for planning as a cross-functional core team 

Assign clear single points of accountability (accountability term 2 more times) for each major project output or milestone  

Ideal to have 4-5 people responsible for delivery of each complex task

Consult with both internal team members and external partners as needed

Keep everyone informed appropriately without over-communicating  

Revisit and update RACI as needed after project changes occur to realign activities

Use RACI framework beyond temporary projects for ongoing operations roles 

Advantages and Limitations of the RACI Model

Benefits of the raci matrix.

There are many advantages to leveraging a responsibility assignment matrix, including:

Creates clarity around ownership for delivering project outcomes

Minimizes confusion and duplication of effort 

Improves coordination through planned interfaces

Enables flexibility alongside changes when maintained

Fosters collaboration through transparency

Supports resource planning and capacity balancing

Limitations of RACI Charts

A few limitations to keep in mind include:

Can become outdated if not updated alongside fluid project changes

May be too tactical rather than focused on big picture 

People may be forced into roles not best suited to strengths

Seen by some as unnecessary rigid planning 

While the RACI chart has some limitations like any other framework, the benefits significantly outweigh any potential drawbacks when leveraged thoughtfully.

RACI Matrix Example Template

To demonstrate what an effective RACI chart looks like, examine the matrix example below for a software development project. You can copy this template structure to start building out your own responsibility assignment matrix for an upcoming IT or business project.

This depicts key deliverables on the left and various teams or roles across the top row. Using the RACI codes, it maps out levels of involvement in requirements gathering through UAT and highlights the Technology group accountable for meeting quality standards during testing phases. 

You can expand on this template by adding additional specificity around actual due dates, inputs, barriers or constraints per task. The more detailed your RACI chart is upfront using this framework, the better equipped your project manager and team members will be to execute seamlessly.

Using RACI Charts for Different Team Structures

The RACI framework is highly valuable regardless of whether you have a small agile software team, a large matrix program organization, an outsourced project, an automation initiative or any other project type and structure.

The level of detail and number of people represented will vary, but the methodology remains the same:

Outline key milestones/deliverables

Identify parties involved

Define single accountable owner

Map all other supporting responsibilities

Distinguish active consulted roles 

Note informed stakeholder groups

Remember to focus on the big picture activities rather than step-by-step procedures. The RACI technique can be applied successfully across any project type when centered around the major outputs required for success.

Transitioning RACI Roles into Operations

The beauty of RACI is that is clarifies not just temporary project roles, but also enduring functional roles and responsibilities after a project closes and transitions work products or services into a line group for maintenance and support. 

Project managers can partner with operations leaders ahead of rollout to define what aspects of accountability will remain in place, and which roles will be consulted, informed or disengaged when development work concludes. 

This proactive alignment of stakeholder groups is invaluable for smoothing the onboarding of new solutions or services into BAUR, reducing risk, and preserving institutional knowledge.

Frequently Asked Questions About the RACI Model

What are some best practices for using a RACI in project management?

Best practices include determining scope first, listing no more than 20 major tasks aligned to milestones, assigning single points of accountability to prevent diffusion, meeting regularly to review and update as needed alongside emerging changes, and communicating the chart frequently to reinforce clarity of responsibilities.

How does a RACI matrix differ from process flow or value stream mapping?  

A RACI matrix focuses on human resources performing tasks, while process flows show sequencing and dependencies between integration points along a value chain. Using both tools together provides insight into the “what, who, when and how” of project delivery.

Is the use of RACI matrices applicable to agile software projects?  

Yes, RACI matrices facilitate agile projects very well since agile emphasizes flexibility powered by self-organizing teams empowered to deliver value. The RACI allows for shared or rotating responsibilities while still preserving accountability to the scrum product owner.

What are some key limitations or criticisms of the RACI framework?  

Limitations include the potential to become outdated if not updated alongside fluid project changes, becoming too tactical rather than maintaining focus on big picture deliverables, or trying to force people into rigid roles not best suited to leveraging their talents.

How can we expand use of RACIs beyond temporary projects?

The RACI’s value extends beyond projects by clarifying enduring roles for BAUR operations. Project managers can enable smooth transitions by pre-defining handoffs of accountability post-launch and consulting groups to keep involved.

Conclusion and Next Steps

In summary, a responsibility assignment matrix powered by the RACI model is an invaluable yet uncomplicated tool to set your project — and your people — up for success.

Key next steps include:

Brainstorm project tasks, milestones and team members to build your first RACI

Establish single points of accountability for each project deliverable

Socialize the RACI with your full project team and executives

Revisit RACI matrix on a structured cadence to update roles and tasks

Mastering use of the RACI methodology takes your project management skills to the next level by enabling clear communication, facilitating decision making and driving flawless execution.

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Responsibility Assignment Matrix: the Basics and Template

Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM): this article explains the Responsibility Assignment Matrix or RAM for short in a practical way. Next to what it is (including an in-depth explanation video), this article also highlights an example, inlcuiding the steps to conduct, to use it during a complex project and downloadable and editable Responsibility Assignment Matrix template to get started. Enjoy reading!

What is the Responsibility Assignment Matrix or RAM?

Project managers like using a RAM to identify the role of the various members of a project team. This matrix is a structural chart in which is visually made clear (on paper or through project management software ) what should be done by whom in cross functional or departmental projects.

In the matrix it is clear what the project tasks, roles and responsibilities are of each of the project team members. It is also referred to as the RACI matrix , VERI matrix or Linear Responsibility Chart (LCR).

It’s often used as an integral part of the Work Breakdown Structure .

Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) video (in depth-explainer)

Watch the in-depth video below for a recap of what you’ve just read, so you will remember it more easily!

Responsibility Assignment Matrix example

Despite the simple nature of all information in the matrix memory, it can be very time-consuming to assign each member of the project team with the right tasks and responsibilities.

In addition the appropriate roles must be defined in advance before they are included in the RAM.

Figure 1 – The Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) / RACI Matrix

To do this well and accurately, the matrix can be completed using the following steps:

• Step 1: Identify all the participants and (facilities) supporters of the project.
• Step 2: Identify all the deliverables for the project.
• Step 3: Discuss with all team members how they can support each other to achieve the best performance. It is important to define each participant’s responsibilities so that there will be no misunderstandings on who is responsible for completing the tasks at hand.
• Step 4: The initial draft of the RAM is created, with the activities in the left-hand column and the team members in the project in the first right-hand column. Enter the roles that each person will have in the cells that have been formed. An example of this can be seen in the form of a RACI chart (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed) above. Note that only one person can be accountable for each task.
• Step 5: Have the participants in the project approve the RAM (in writing). Again to prevent misunderstandings.
• Step 6: Any remarks on changes in the RAM can be filed by the participants in writing. Finally, the responsibility assignment matrix will be reviewed and after approval has been obtained, the project can start.
• Step 7: Interim assessment is important. When it appears that it is better to adjust the RAM, you will have to go back to step 3 and the adjustments must be discussed with all team members.

Responsibility Assignment Matrix and complex projects

The RAM is also suitable for complex projects. When activities are overlooked and the matrix contains incomplete and/or inaccurate information, this will lead to duplicated efforts.

It is therefore advisable to ensure that all information is included in the matrix and that all information is and remains accurate.

The following suggestions contribute to a larger chance of success of a matrix in a complex project:

1. Hierarchy of charts

Divide the RAM into separate graphs so that a distinction can be made according to priorities .

The RAM with the highest levels identifies the high-priority activities within the project.

From this point RAM-graphs can be developed that have been derived from this higher level.

2. Involvement

By involving all the members of the project team in the development of the RAM, they will know exactly what is expected of them and they will participate and be (more) committed to using their own specializations.

3. Written representation

By putting the RAM in writing, any mistakes or problems can be identified.

Moreover, the participants in the project will have a better understanding of what their joint participation in the project is.

Role identification

In a RAM the role of the individual and the role of the group are not separated. The role describes the participation with accompanying tasks of the individual in the project.

Such a role can be performed by several people in a group.

Vice versa, one person may have several roles in the project. This is why several employees can have the role of project manager and one individual may have the role of manager and task performer.

Responsibility Assignment Matrix template

Start visualizing what the tasks and responsibilities are of each team member with this ready to use RAM template.

Download the Responsibility Assignment Matrix template

It’s Your Turn

What do you think? Is the Responsibility Assignment Matrix in today’s modern project- and stakeholder management? Do you recognize the practical explanation or do you have more additions? What are your success factors for good stakeholder management during a project?

Share your experience and knowledge in the comments box below.

More information

• Project Management Institute (2010). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge ( PMBOK Guide) . PMI Standards Committee.
• Baker, D. (2009). Multi-Company Project Management: Maximizing Business Results Through Strategic Collaboration . J Ross.
• Cleland, D. and Ireland, L. (2006). Project management: strategic design and implementation . McGraw-Hill .

How to cite this article: Mulder, P. (2012). Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) . Retrieved [insert date] from Toolshero: https://www.toolshero.com/project-management/responsibility-assignment-matrix/

Original publication date:: 03/26/2012 | Last update: 06/28/2024

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Patty Mulder

Patty Mulder is an Dutch expert on Management Skills, Personal Effectiveness and Business Communication. She is also a Content writer, Business Coach and Company Trainer and lives in the Netherlands (Europe). Note: all her articles are written in Dutch and we translated her articles to English!

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What is a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) in Project Management?

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Introduction to Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM)

Project management is a complex process that involves multiple stakeholders, tasks, and resources. To ensure the success of a project, it is crucial to assign clear roles and responsibilities to team members and accurately define their tasks. 

One tool that can help project managers achieve this goal is the Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM). In this article, we will explore the definition and benefits of RAM, as well as some examples.

If you’re looking for a RAM template that will help you assign roles and clarify responsibilities, Wrike has a customizable template ready to go.

What is a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) in project management?

A responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) in project management, also known as a RACI chart or RACI matrix, details all the necessary stakeholders and clarifies responsibilities amongst cross-functional teams and their involvement level in a project. RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed and each letter corresponds to a team member.

A RAM in project management should be referred to by all parties throughout a project because it helps plan an individual’s roles and responsibilities before work begins. A RACI matrix ensures all stakeholders know who is responsible for completing a task or getting feedback on deliverables.

The four roles are broken down as follows:

• Responsible: The person(s) completing the task
• Accountable: The team member coordinating the actions, making decisions, and delegating to those responsible for the task
• Consulted: The person(s) who will be communicated with regarding decisions and tasks
• Informed: The person(s) who will be updated during the project and upon completion

Read more about RACI here . 

Identify and visualize roles seamlessly with Wrike

Responsibility assignment matrix example.

A common RAM   template looks like the example below. Notice how all stakeholders can have more than one role:

Responsibility Assignment Matrix template

Below you can see a powerful RAM template . The chart helps with visualizing roles and workload clearly. Therefore, project managers and team members follow the progress easily and stay on track.

Clarify roles with Wrike

In conclusion, RAM is a useful tool for any project manager who wants to ensure their team is clear on their responsibilities. It helps to establish a structured approach to project management, allowing for better communication, accountability, and ultimately, project success.

Using Wrike’s pre-built template, you can define the roles of each team member so everybody is on the same page. The template will also help you balance your workload and create complete transparency on your team structure.

What is a RACI Chart?

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Responsibility Assignment Matrix: A Complete Overview

Dive into the world of Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAMs), which helps assign roles and responsibilities and how they streamline Project Management. This comprehensive blog explains their purpose, benefits, and practical use, enabling effective role definition and accountability in project teams. Continue reading!

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This comprehensive blog aims to provide you with a complete overview of the Responsibility Assignment Matrix and its pivotal role in Project Management and organisational structure. 

Table of Content 

1) What is a Responsibility Assignment Matrix in Project Management? 

2)  Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) goal in Project Management 

3) How to create a Responsibility Assignment Matrix? 

4) Benefits of Responsibility Assignment Matrix 

5) Developing Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) best practices 

6) Conclusion  

What is a Responsibility Assignment Matrix in Project Management? 

A Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) in Project Management is a tool that outlines and defines the roles and responsibilities of individuals or groups involved in a project. Its purpose is to ensure that everyone understands their specific duties and tasks. The primary purpose of a RAM is to bring clarity to the project structure, helping to prevent confusion, overlap, and accountability issues throughout the project lifecycle.

RAM in Project Management is also known as Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed (RACI). RACI represents different levels of roles and responsibilities for individuals or teams:

a) Responsible: The individual or group in responsible for finishing a certain job or project. They are the ones who perform the work.

b) Accountable: The individuals who have complete responsibility and decision-making authority over the job or result. They ensure that the task is completed and of satisfactory quality.

c) Consulted: Individuals or stakeholders are consulted for their views or skills before to making a decision or taking actions. They contribute essential insights but may not be directly responsible for the task.

d) Informed: Individuals or stakeholders who need regular updates on the task’s progress or result. They are not actively involved in its conclusion, but they must be notified of any advancements.  

Responsibility Assignment Matrix goal in Project Management 

The primary goal of a Responsibility Assignment Matrix in Project Management is to clearly define and communicate the Roles and Responsibilities of Project Managers and individuals or teams involved in a project. Here are the key goals of using a RAM in Project Management: 

a) Clear roles and responsibilities: The RAM establishes clear roles and responsibilities for each team member, minimising confusion and conflicts.

b) Enhanced communication: Documenting roles and responsibilities concisely in the RAM facilitates effective communication within the project team. Also, enabling quick identification of contacts for specific issues or inquires.

c) Conflict resolution: BY operating a reference point, the RAM helps to resolve conflicts or misunderstandings about responsibilities, providing a foundation for conversation and conflict resolution.

d) Improved project control: With the RAM in place, Project Managers and stakeholders can more easily monitor project progress, identifying task accountability and monitoring work package status.

e) Efficiency and accountability: By allocating responsibility to each project aspect, the RAM promotes accountability among team members, resulting in increased efficiency as everyone understands their duties and expectations.

f) Risk Management: The clear roles of RAM help detect potential hazards associated with functional gaps or overlaps in the Risk Management Process , enabling proactive risk mitigation strategies.  

g) Optimal Resource Allocation: Project managers can optimise resource allocation by understanding task ownership and workload distribution as described in the RAM.

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How to create a Responsibility Assignment Matrix? 

Identify the project scope 

Start by recognising the project's scope or the exact purpose for which you are building RAM. This includes establishing project objectives, outcomes, and critical milestones.

Define roles and responsibilities 

a) Identify the key roles involved in the project. Common roles may include Project Manager, Team Leader, Team Member, Stakeholders, and other relevant positions. 

b) Clearly define the responsibilities associated with each role. These responsibilities should be specific and measurable so there is no ambiguity. 

Choose a framework - RACI, RASCI, or DACI 

a) Select a framework for your RAM. The most commonly used frameworks are RACI, RASCI, and DACI: 

b) RACI: RACI   Stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. It outlines who is in charge of a task, who is answerable for following it through to completion, who should be consulted, and who should be informed. 

c) RASCI: RASCI Similar to RACI, but with an additional role, the "S" for Support. This framework further clarifies who provides support for a task. 

d) DACI: This framework is similar to RASCI but adds the role of Driver. The Driver is responsible for ensuring that a task is completed. 

Assign roles using the framework 

a) For each task or work package within the project, assign the relevant roles using the chosen framework. Each task should have a Responsible person, an Accountable person, and, if necessary, people who need to be Consulted, Informed, or Supported. 

b) Be specific and ensure that there is only one person designated as "Accountable" for each task to avoid confusion. 

Document the RAM 

a) Create a table or chart that lists all the tasks or work packages on one axis and the identified roles on the other. 

b) Fill in the matrix with the appropriate role designations (R, A, C, I, S, D) for each task and role. 

Review and validate 

Share the RAM with the project team and stakeholders for evaluation and approval. Confirm that everyone agrees on the roles and responsibilities.

Implement and communicate 

Once the RAM has been completed and approved, communicate it to the project team and other stakeholders. Ensure that everyone understands their jobs and responsibilities. 

Regularly update the RAM 

As the project evolves, it is critical to improve the RAM as necessary. Roles and duties might shift, and new tasks may develop. Keep the RAM current to reflect the project's evolving needs.

Unlock your potential with our Project Management Courses now! 

Benefits of Responsibility Assignment Matrix

a) Clarify roles and responsibilities: A RAM clearly defines who is responsible for each task, which helps prevent confusion and ensures that team members understand their roles.

b) Improved communication: The RAM serves as a central reference point for roles and responsibilities, promoting effective communication within the project team. Team members can quickly identify who to contact for specific issues or questions.

c) Conflict resolution: When there is a dispute or ambiguity regarding responsibilities, the RAM provides a basis for discussion and conflict resolution. It helps identify where accountability lies and facilitates problem-solving.

d) Enhanced project control: The RAM allows Project Managers and stakeholders to monitor and manage the project's development.  It helps you to track the status of assignments and ensure that tasks are getting done as planned.

e) Efficiency and accountability: Clearly defined roles and responsibilities create a sense of responsibility among team members, maybe resulting in improved productivity. When people understand what is required of them, and they are more likely to fulfil it.

f) Resource allocation: The RAM helps Project Managers optimise resource allocation by understanding who is responsible for specific tasks. This ensures that workloads are distributed evenly and that resources are used efficiently. 

Developing Responsibility Assignment Matrix best practices 

Developing a Responsibility Assignment Matrix is a critical aspect of project management. To create an effective RAM, consider the following best practices: 

a) Involve key stakeholders: Define roles and responsibilities after consulting with project stakeholders in regards with Stakeholder Analysis , team members, and subject matter experts. Their participation can provide useful information about the project's objectives. 

b) Keep it simple: Use a simple framework (e.g., RACI, RASCI, or DACI) that team members are able to quickly understand and use.

c) Use clear and specific language: In order to prevent confusion, write tasks clearly and precisely. Avoid using confusing or unclear terms that may lead to confusion.

d) Designate a single "accountable" person: Assign only one person as "Accountable" for each task. This individual is ultimately responsible for the task's completion. Multiple accountable persons can lead to confusion and accountability issues. 

e) Consult and inform appropriately:   It is important to carefully consider the individuals who need to be consulted and informed for each task. Avoid unnecessary involvement, which can lead to inefficiency. Ensure that the right people are included in these roles. 

f) Review and validate with the team: Share the RAM with the project team and stakeholders for feedback and validation. Ensure that all parties agree with the assigned roles and responsibilities. 

g) Document assumptions and clarifications: If certain roles and responsibilities are based on assumptions or require clarification, document these notes alongside the RAM. This can help avoid misunderstandings in the future. 

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Conclusion  

A Responsibility Assignment Matrix is an important tool in Project Management and organisational systems. Its importance comes from its capacity to define, assign, and explain the roles and responsibilities, resulting in improved project effectiveness and performance.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Creating a Responsibility Matrix is appropriate for the project's initiation stage. It outlines roles, duties, and communication channels to promote responsibility throughout the project's lifecycle. 

The Responsibility Assignment Matrix or RACI model divides tasks as Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, or Informed. It promotes transparency and accountability among the project group.

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9 raci chart examples for project management.

September 7, 2023

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Not having project roles and responsibilities set in place leads to a myriad of project management-related issues—schedule delays, scaling costs, and lower performance, just to name a few. 

That’s when the RACI matrix, also known as the RACI diagram or responsibility assignment matrix, comes into the picture. 🖼️

The RACI model helps with mapping all of the stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities, bringing structure and clarity, and engaging everyone from the team in the successful project delivery so that miscalculations are out of the question. 

Here’s why many people from the corporate world across various industries, from healthcare to construction, swear by RACI charts . 🙏

What is a RACI Matrix Chart?

Advantages of the raci chart model, when to use the raci chart model, how to create a raci chart model, clickup examples, miro examples.

• Coda Examples

Who Benefits From Using a RACI Chart?

Raci is the way to go.

RACI matrix is a simple approach to defining project roles and responsibilities that help produce desired outcomes.

This term is an acronym that stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. RACI essentially describes the different roles assigned to team members involved in the project and details who does what.

Responsible : As you can already suggest, this person is responsible for taking action and ensuring that tasks on the project are being worked on.

Typically, this is a team member or a project manager that reports to an A. You can have more Rs in a RACI, and some of them can also be involved in the decision-making process .

However, it is highly advisable not to blow things up out of proportion and over-assign the number of Responsibles in your responsibility assignment matrix. 

Accountable : That’s someone who ensures all the responsibilities are assigned properly, approves or rejects work or decisions (basically, this person is a decision maker), and ensures that everything is successfully and timely delivered. According to the RACI matrix, there should be only one A.  

Consulted : This is the person the team consults about various topics and actions, an expert. This person, or multiple persons, provides feedback and evaluates so tasks can be performed.

Informed : Someone who should be updated on progress once everything is done and dusted but isn’t directly involved in the process. This person doesn’t contribute to making decisions or delivering tasks nor is consulted on any matter.

We know project management teams love abbreviations : PMP, KPI, SOW, and SME. The list goes on and on, but the RACI matrix chart makes it a breeze to scheme out key decisions, tasks, milestones , and roles.

When it comes to large project management teams, where team members are distributed across multiple departments and reliant on other teams, it is kind of natural to suffer from role confusion.  

In a situation like this, it’s up to a project manager or the leading project team to step up and make sure that every member of every team is well aware of what’s expected from them. Things can get even more challenging if the work is remotely managed and done. However, that’s when the RACI matrix comes to the rescue! 🚀

The RACI chart model provides a myriad of benefits in this regard :

• It eliminates role confusion and confusion about who makes decisions (it could be that the Accountable or Responsible party is the decision-maker, so it should be made clear from the beginning)
• It encourages teamwork and communication between everyone involved in the project, which leads to setting expectations straight
• It prevents over and under-allocation of resources of a team member and ensures a smooth reallocation of resources when needed
• It can guarantee that even in case of resource reallocation, no task is overlooked
• By using it, you’ll streamline communications, eliminate conflict resolution, instill trust and ensure a high level of engagement
• Ultimately, it improves project efficiency and saves time  

It’s worth mentioning that the RACI chart can ensure that every relationship is managed appropriately, whether it be with customers, sponsors, VIP clients, internal users, suppliers, investors, executives, analysts, or government regulators. 

That’s why this model ticks all of the boxes for both B2B and B2C businesses. ✅

RACI matrix can be used for all-things-project-management, from clarifying team member roles and tasks to eliminating any sort of confusion and stalled processes. 

The great thing is that it is unbelievably flexible, and you can use it no matter which industry you are in. 🤩 

Here are some of the examples of when the RACI chart model can be helpful :

• Role confusion typically gets in the way of progress and bogs down the approval process or when decisions are made seemingly arbitrarily, again, because of the lack of transparency around the roles
• When authority, responsibilities, roles, and tasks are not clearly defined
• When there is no clarity on who should be performing tasks, which either results in multiple people working on the same task or none of them working on the project tasks they should be working on

As an example, any project manager or product owner is somehow (wrongfully) seen as responsible for every little detail and the success of a project team in general. 

The RACI chart takes the burden of these roles. It allows developers and designers to be responsible for their scope of work . 

However, note that RACI is not the one-size-fits-all solution. 

It works wonders with larger, complex projects that involve multiple stakeholders. On the other hand, it simply doesn’t cut the mustard for smaller project management teams and fast-moving projects since it can only slow down the decision-making process and the project as a whole. 

Before you actually start creating a RACI chart, take these factors into account :

• Ideally, one person should have only one type of responsibility
• The Accountable person should have the authority and be able to provide guidance and help with completing tasks
• Assign a single Accountable party per deliverable
• Every task should be associated with Responsible and Accountable roles while it is not mandatory to ask for outside input if the task is not overly complex
• Stakeholders should be informed even about minor changes and updates on the project 

Now, here’s how to create a RACI chart:

1. define deliverables.

Define and list the main project tasks that need to be completed and list them all on the left side of the RACI chart, one under another. 

Do not include all of the project deliverables in the chart, or else you’ll go too granular and make it too complex to use and understand.

2. Identify project roles

Identify members of the project team and their roles (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed ) and add them to the top of the chart, one next to another. 

For instance, you can go for something like this: project executive, project manager, business analyst, technical architect , and application developer. 

Alternatively, you can specify roles by name. This is particularly useful since it clarifies who does what and if multiple stakeholders are assigned similar roles.

3. Connect the dots

Now is the time to connect tasks and roles. ♻️

Assigning Responsible and Accountable per task is a must, while you should also think carefully about who needs to be Consulted and who is Informed about the deliverables.  

4. Resolve any conflicts if they occur

Ideally, one team member should be assigned to only a few responsibilities (two to three maxi).

If there are many empty cells, try reallocating resources (change Responsible to Consulted). 

Also, if there are too many Accountable roles, this could slow down the decision-making process, so aim to have just one Accountable person per task. 

Too many Cs can also cause delays for project managers since some under the consultant role can often be switched to Informed. Having no C and I roles usually points to a lack of communication within the team.

RACI Matrix Examples and Use Cases

For our first batch examples, we’ll be using our beloved tool, ClickUp . You can customize every part of the platform, making it easier than ever to create your ideal RACI matrix. When you need inspiration or guidance, take advantage of the ready-to-use and editable RACI Planning Template in ClickUp to help get you started.

Let’s see how much flexibility we can have when creating RACI charts in ClickUp.

Simple RACI Chart in Doc View

Here’s a perfect example of what we’ve explained above. ClickUp’s Doc view can be used for making a RACI chart without overcomplicating things. 

Stakeholders to the left, roles to the top and right. Jack, Sabrina, and Selena are Responsible for program management , Caroll is Accountable, Samatha is Consulted, and Ahmed is Informed. 

It’s a great thing that there’s only one responsible person who holds the role of Accountable when it comes to program management. That’s the thing with campaign marketing , design, product marketing , data analysis, brand marketing, and customer success, too! 

It’s also easy to spot that no resources are over-allocated. Jack is the Responsible person for program management, brand marketing, and customer success while he is Accountable for campaign marketing, Informed for product marketing , and Consulted for Data Analysis. 

Color-Coded RACI Matrix in List View

ClickUp’s List view lets us go more into detail with the RACI chart. It also allows you to bring a pop of color to the whole concept to make sometimes dull project management more refreshing. 🌈

You can actually choose between various role colors. We used blue for Responsible, green for Accountable, and so on. It’s totally up to you to customize the table and roles to your liking. 

Here, we also have slightly different positioning of roles and tasks. Project tasks are listed on the left, one under another, while names and responsibilities are located on the top and to the right (if you prefer this kind of visualization, that’s totally cool). 

You can also see priority flags that can give everyone direction and point out tasks that need to be taken care of ASAP and the ones that can wait a little bit. 🚩

RACI Model in Table View

The Table view allows getting more nitty-gritty with your RACI chart. Aside from seeing roles, tasks, and priorities, you can also track the status of each task from the chart. Statuses are fully customizable; this is just an example of how you can name and color each. 

RACI Chart Example Grouped by Status

Within the Table view, ClickUp also lets you filter and group tasks by name, role, status, priority, etc. This allows you to get more into the nitty-gritty details of your RACI chart and see which tasks are in progress, which ones are yet to be worked on, and which ones are completed. 

Finally, as already known, ClickUp views , and the Whiteboard is among our favorites! 😍

RACI Roles in Whiteboard View

The ClickUp Whiteboard makes it easy to visualize tasks, roles, and roles separately, all with a touch of color. It ensures that everyone works as a team. This leaves practically no room for conflicts or low morale. 

Next up is the infamous mind mapping tool, Miro . Let’s see what kind of RACI magic we can come up with.

RACI Stakeholder Map

Miro is another excellent tool you can use for assigning roles, responsibilities, and tasks. In this particular example, Miro shows you can easily create a RACI stakeholders matrix for service design teams. 

Can you tell that there’s something different here? 🤔 

Exactly! Instead of sticking with the regular RACI chart, Miro decided to take a new approach and have everything from roles and responsibilities to tasks neatly organized using the Map view. 🗺️

You can see the stakeholders and tasks on the left, their roles (decision maker, heavy influencers, manage closely) visualized below, and all of them together within a circular-shaped map. 

You can see that roles are layered in circles, going from the ones with, let’s say, less responsibility (e.g., Informed) to Responsible.

I don’t know about you, but we love digital sticky notes! The names of everyone on the team are written on these sticky notes, while their roles are indicated by using emojis. 

Bonus: Stakeholder Mapping Templates

RACI Marketing Team Model

This RACI chart is specifically built for the needs of marketing teams. Project management, campaign, product, and brand marketing, as well as customer success, a.k.a deliverables, are positioned on the left.  

Responsibilities and roles are clearly defined per task, while team members are grouped and arranged accordingly, so everyone knows what they are doing, and what everyone else is doing.  

There’s a single Accountable person for each task, while the number of Responsible persons is relatively balanced. 

Coda Example s

Last but not least in the tools lineup, we have the new kid in the project management block, Coda . Let’s see how it stacks up against our previous RACI templates. 

Bonus: Perceptual map templates !

RACI Matrix Example by Task Breakdown 

Coda gives a practical example of what it looks like to create and use a RACI chart, even if you are not necessarily working on an overly complex project.  

All of the tasks are clearly defined, as well as all of the roles (CEO, CTO, VP of product, product manager, UI designer, content writer, and financial analyst) and responsibilities that are displayed in vivid colors. This allows for better visibility and differentiation, and we can also integrate it with third-party software to schedule consultancies or even track the progress of each project.  

RACI Chart Example by Task Status

Coda also lets you track the status of each task (not started, in progress, done) on the RACI chart, color-code each status, and add notes to clarify who is working on which task and how many resources are available.

Instead of starting from scratch, you can choose among several other absolutely rocking RACI chart templates that will save you valuable time and set your team up to speed from the very first second! 

Bonus: Matrix Templates & Matrix Organizational Structure Examples

Project Managers: A RACI chart is a useful tool for project managers who need to track the various tasks and roles associated with a project. By tracking these roles, it helps to ensure that everyone involved in the project is held accountable for their individual tasks.

• Project Management RACI Chart
• Project Deliverables RACI Chart
• Construction Project RACI Chart
• Agile Projects RACI Chart

Business Leaders: A RACI chart is also useful for business leaders who need to clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each team member. This chart can also be used to identify gaps in roles and responsibilities and help develop an effective plan for allocating resources accordingly.

• Executives RACI Chart
• Change Management RACI Chart
• Stakeholders RACI Chart

RACI is not a project plan but rather a document used for defining roles and responsibilities—it provides more than a clear outline, so your job is to ensure that work and responsibilities are fairly allocated. It also describes the project tasks that need to be completed in advance to eliminate confusion and bottlenecks.

Now that you know more about the RACI Matrix, it’s your turn to try it for yourself! Load one of the templates like the ClickUp RACI template , for example, customize it to your liking, and start delegate tasks and responsibilities more effectively.

Good luck! 😊

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Alladdine Djaidani is a digital marketer and the founder of HustlerEthos.com .

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What is a Responsibility Assignment Matrix

Last updated: Feb 15, 2023

Table of contents

What is a RAM matrix used for?

How to make a ram or raci chart.

Learn what a Responsibility Assignment Matrix is and how to use one to make all your upcoming projects run smoothly.

A Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM), sometimes known as a RACI chart, is a tool used in project management to keep track of all responsibilities assigned to cross-functional teams on a specific task or assignment.

It’s known as a RACI chart because its acronym names the four key roles displayed in the matrix:

• Responsible: Who is the person responsible for completing a task or making a decision?
• Accountable: Who is accountable for the completion of the project overall and will sign off on deliverables and decisions?
• Consulted: Who needs to be consulted to provide input on a particular task or item?
• Informed: Who needs to be kept informed of project progress or completion?

A typical RAM template looks like this:

| Task | Annabelle (PM) | Jack (Technical Lead) | Dory (Technical Team Member) | | ---------- | ---------- | ---------- | ---------- | | Task 1 | A | I | R | | Task 2 | R | C | I | | Task 3 | C | R | C | | Task 4 | A | R/I | R |

The RAM matrix is used to document every task, item and decision involved in a project completion process. By keeping everything logged all in one place, a RAM matrix is an invaluable tool to any project manager or company leader for a few reasons.

• Defines clear roles and responsibilities

There is nothing worse than a project being slowed down or stalled because of confusion over who was supposed to do what. In a RAM, every person or team involved can check to see which task or item.

• Streamlines communication

Sometimes explaining directions in person or over a workplace communication tool can get confusing or be interpreted the wrong way. Even worse, one instance of miscommunication can tank an entire project or jeopardize a relationship with a client.

With a RAM, project managers don’t have to waste time directing questions to the responsible stakeholder in charge of making a decision. The chart informs everyone involved exactly who they can go to for answers, cutting out repetitive conversations and notifying the right people at the right time.

• Distributes workloads evenly

No one ever wants to be the one in the group project that has to do everything. Team members with a higher workload are at a greater risk for burnout. A great benefit of a RAM is that everyone can see how the workload for a certain project is distributed. It’s also a great way to be transparent within workflows.

Don’t let the random letters confuse you. Building a RACI chart is surprisingly simple. It can also easily be tweaked to fit your organization and your particular project. According to the work management platform Wrike , here are four steps to follow when building a responsibility assignment matrix:

• Identify all project roles

Start out with a list of everyone involved in a project, including every team, team member, manager and stakeholder.

• Identify all project tasks

Then make a list of all the tasks and items needed to get a project done. These can include deliverables, activities, milestones and decisions.

• Create a chart with a column for each role and a row for each task

In a spreadsheet—or any other tool you’d like—create a simple table by listing each person or role in the columns and each task or deliverable in the rows.

To get the most out of your RACI chart, try to make the roles as personal as possible. For example, instead of naming a role “technical lead,” try to use names, like “Jack.” This will give every person involved a sense of ownership, while also streamlining communication even further.

• Assign “R,” “A,” “C” or “I” to each person involved

Once you have written out the names of each person and task, now comes the important part of assigning RACI to each person involved. Identify who is responsible, who is accountable, who needs to be consulted and who needs to be informed for every task in the project. A role can have more than one letter, but simplify it as much as you can. Bonus step: Add a color to each letter to make the roles stand out even more.

That’s it! You now have made a successful RACI chart. Review with your team and all stakeholders before you initiate a plan, and you are officially on your way to more effective project management.

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Definition: A Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) describes the role and responsibilities of various people and/or organizations in completing specific tasks for a project.

Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed (RACI) Matrix

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• The Responsibility Assignment Matrix – RAM

Have you ever become entangled in the labyrinth of duties and functions associated with project management? Perhaps what you need is the Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM). 

Managing responsibilities for a project can often feel like herding cats. According to the Project Management Institute , projects with clear role definitions are 30% more likely to be successful. Consider the confusion of team members not knowing who is responsible for what task, which leads to miscommunication, missed deadlines, and irritation. RAM is here to change that narrative.

Consider this scenario: a critical deadline is approaching, but tasks are slipping through the cracks because no one knows who is responsible. The resulting chaos can derail the entire project. RAM is here to change the narrative. By clearly defining and documenting roles and responsibilities, RAM ensures that everyone on the team understands what is expected of them. 

In this blog, we’ll go over the ins and outs of RAM, a tool designed to help you provide clear assignments and streamline project management, turning confusion into clarity and increasing team efficiency.

Table of Contents

What is RAM?

The Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM), also known as the RACI chart, is a project management tool that defines and records the roles and responsibilities of project team members. RAM represents:

• Responsible: Who is completing the task?
• Accountable: Who is making decisions and taking the blame?
• Consulted: Who will be consulted for advice?
• Informed: Who needs to be kept informed about progress?

Understanding RAM Components

To fully realise the potential of a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM), it is critical to understand its key components. Each component contributes differently to the successful and efficient completion of activities. Let’s take a look at how these components contribute to a well-structured project management approach:

Benefits of Using a RAM

Implementing a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) in your project management process provides several key benefits:

• Clarity in Roles and Responsibilities: By defining who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed, a RAM eliminates confusion and prevents task overlap. Everyone is fully aware of the expectations placed on them. 
• Enhanced Communication: Roles that are clearly defined facilitate more efficient communication. There is better communication and fewer misunderstandings when team members are aware of their responsibilities and how they fit into the larger project. 
• Improved Accountability: A RAM facilitates progress tracking and guarantees that everyone is carrying out their duties. Accountability is improved by this clarity, which also makes it easier to monitor performance and quickly resolve any problems.
• Effective Resource Allocation: Project managers may determine the resources required for each task and make sure they are used efficiently by using a RAM to map out roles and responsibilities. Better resource management and optimised project execution result from this.

Steps to Create a RAM

Making a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) is an easy procedure that can greatly improve your project management. Follow these steps to develop an effective RAM: 

• Identify Tasks: Start by enumerating every task or activity that needs to be finished for the project. The basis for role assignment will be this exhaustive list. 
• Determine Roles: List every position needed to carry out the project in a successful manner. This covers all individuals who will be a part of the team or affected by the duties, including stakeholders. 
• Assign Responsibilities: Populate the RAM chart by assigning specific roles to each task. To guarantee there are no questions, state clearly who is in charge of each activity and who should be informed, accountable, consulted, and responsible.
• Review and Communicate: Once the RAM is complete, review it with the team. Make sure that everyone is aware of their specific duties and responsibilities and that the assignments have been agreed upon.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

When using a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM), watch out for these common pitfalls and take steps to avoid them:

• Overloading Roles: Burnout can result from giving a worker an excessive amount of work. Assign tasks to team members fairly, and check the RAM frequently to make sure there is balance.
• Lack of Clarity: Vague roles cause confusion. Clearly define and communicate each role and responsibility, and hold a meeting to ensure everyone understands their roles.
• Ignoring Stakeholders: Overlooking stakeholders can lead to miscommunication. To ensure alignment, include every relevant stakeholder in the planning process and keep them informed as the project progresses.

Need Help Becoming a Certified Project Manager?

If you want to advance your career and become a certified project manager, you must first obtain the necessary training. The extensive courses offered by PM Training School are intended to give you the abilities, expertise, and certification required to succeed in the project management industry.

Why Choose PM Training School?

• Expert-Led Courses : Learn from experienced project management professionals who bring real-world insights into the classroom.
• Comprehensive Curriculum: Our courses cover everything from fundamentals to advanced project management techniques, preparing you to take certification exams such as PMP® , PRINCE2®, and others.
• Certification Support: To make sure you’re ready for the test, we provide practice exams , flashcards , and personalised coaching. We will walk you through the entire certification process.
• Career Advancement: Earning your project management certification can open doors to new opportunities, higher salaries, and greater job security.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Let’s go over some frequently asked questions from working professionals about the Responsibility Assignment Matrix – RAM.

1. What is the Responsibility Assignment Matrix’s (RAM) main objective? 

A RAM’s primary purpose is to clearly define team members’ roles and responsibilities, ensuring that everyone understands their specific duties and expectations. 

2. How does RAM enhance project management? 

RAM improves project management by bringing clarity, encouraging improved teamwork, and fortifying accountability, all of which contribute to more effective and successful project completion.

3. Can RAM be applied to small projects? 

Absolutely. RAM is a flexible tool that works well for any size project, assisting in the simplification of roles and duties in both small- and large-scale projects.

4. What distinguishes “responsible” from “accountable”?

While the “accountable” person makes sure the task is finished accurately and according to the necessary standards, the “responsible” people carry out the task itself.

5. How frequently should the RAM be reviewed?

The RAM should be periodically evaluated and modified to reflect any modifications to the project, guaranteeing that it stays in line with the objectives and dynamics of the team.

We hope this blog has provided you with useful information about the Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) and how it can improve your project management process. 

Have you given RAM any thought for your projects? If not, now is the perfect time to explore this powerful tool and see the difference it can make in your project’s success. Start small, evaluate the results, and observe how your staff gets more productive and organised.

Interested in becoming a certified project manager? Enquire now at PM Training School to find out how we can help you achieve your goals!

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Projects often involve a multitude of stakeholders , each with their own set of responsibilities and expectations. Without a clear understanding of these roles, project failure becomes a real possibility. This is where a RACI chart can prove to be invaluable. 

A RACI matrix provides a visual representation of the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders within a project. By utilizing a RACI matrix template, project managers can clearly define who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for each task or deliverable. 

In this article, we’ll dive into what a RACI Matrix is and how you can use it for your project.

What is a RACI Matrix?

The RACI Matrix, also called a Responsibility Assignment Matrix, visually represents the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders involved in a project. Using a RACI matrix template, project managers can easily assign tasks and clarify each individual or group's role in the project. 

The RACI Matrix definition is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. These four categories help define each stakeholder's level of involvement and responsibility, ensuring clear communication and effective collaboration throughout the project lifecycle .

Benefits of using a RACI Matrix

Role clarity.

A RACI matrix provides a systematic approach to dividing roles and responsibilities within a team. This matrix ensures that team members are aware of their roles and the expectations placed upon them, reducing confusion and promoting efficiency. This way, teams can improve communication and collaboration and ensure that all necessary tasks are assigned and completed.

Encourages Communication

Another benefit to having a RACI matrix is that it helps eliminate confusion and duplication of efforts by providing a clear understanding of who is responsible, who needs to be consulted, who should be informed, and who should be accountable for each task or decision. 

By using a RACI Matrix and a reliable project management tool like Workamajig , communication can flow smoothly, and everyone involved remains aligned and informed throughout the project or organizational processes.

Ensures Accountability

A RACI matrix helps ensure that every task and responsibility necessary for the project's success is assigned to someone who will take ownership and complete it. Using a RACI matrix template, project managers can effectively delegate tasks and ensure that all necessary work is done. This ultimately leads to improved efficiency and productivity within the project team.

How to Create a RACI Matrix

Understand the project.

Before creating a RACI matrix, it is crucial to have a comprehensive understanding of the project and its requirements. This includes knowing the project scope and project deliverables and identifying the parties involved in the project. By clearly understanding the tasks that need to be completed, you can effectively assign roles and responsibilities in the RACI matrix. 

Additionally, it is important to understand the dynamics and expectations of the project stakeholders. This knowledge will help ensure that the RACI matrix accurately reflects the responsibilities and accountabilities of each party.

Create a RACI Table

Start by opening a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets . Then, create a table with the project tasks listed in the leftmost column and the stakeholders listed in the top row. Each cell in the table would represent the intersection of a task and a stakeholder. In these cells, assign the appropriate RACI roles.

You may also opt to download a RACI Table template available below.

Define Tasks, Stakeholders, and Assignments

Define the tasks that need to be done for the project and the involved project stakeholders . Once all the tasks and stakeholders have been identified, fill in the cells of the RACI matrix based on the roles that each stakeholder plays for each task. 

As mentioned earlier, the RACI matrix uses four key designations: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. It is essential to ensure that each task has at least one party responsible for it. This ensures accountability and clarity in the project, allowing for efficient and effective completion of tasks. 

Review and Adjust

Once you have completed your RACI matrix, route it through all the stakeholders involved in the project. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and aligned with their roles and responsibilities. By sharing the RACI matrix with the stakeholders, you enable them to review and provide any necessary feedback or clarifications. It also allows them to understand their level of involvement and accountability in the project. 

It is also advisable to seek signoffs from the stakeholders, if possible, to avoid any potential confusion or misunderstandings throughout the project and facilitate smooth execution.

Keep Visible

To ensure effective project execution, make the RACI chart readily available for the team. By doing this, they can refer to it whenever needed, ensuring everyone stays aligned and aware of their respective roles throughout the project.

Understanding the RACI Matrix Template

The RACI Matrix is composed of three parts:

Stakeholders

• Roles (RACI)

The first column of the RACI chart is dedicated to listing the project tasks. The level of detail included in this column would vary depending on the specific project and the needs of the team. 

It is important to strike a balance between providing enough detail to accurately represent the tasks and not overwhelming the chart with excessive information. The level of detail in this column should make sense and provide a clear understanding of the work that needs to be accomplished.

Stakeholders can be individuals or groups, both internal and external to the organization. Internal stakeholders might include your team, your team heads, and management. External stakeholders can include clients, consultants, and other entities who might be involved in approvals, permissions, and regulations for the project.

In the RACI Matrix, stakeholders are listed at the top row.

Roles in the RACI Matrix can either be Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, or Informed.

In the RACI Matrix template, each cell is filled with the appropriate letter (R, A, C, or I) to indicate each stakeholder's relationship to each task. This visual representation makes it easy to understand who is responsible for completing each task, who is accountable for its success, who needs to be consulted for their expertise, and who needs to be informed of the progress.

Free download of a simple RACI Matrix template for 2024

RACI Matrix Example: Participating in a Convention

Use for Free or Open in Google Sheets

Wrapping Up

A RACI matrix, short for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed, is a valuable tool for managing communication and collaboration among stakeholders. The matrix helps to establish clear accountability, clarify roles and responsibilities, and promote effective communication and aligned expectations. 

By utilizing a RACI Matrix template, organizations can streamline the process of assigning roles and responsibilities, saving time and effort.

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Responsibility Assignment Matrix: Template, Example & Benefits

Home Blog Project Management Responsibility Assignment Matrix: Template, Example & Benefits

Your team is the most crucial resource in completing a job. They must adhere to the project's schedule and budget. Controlling the project requires everyone involved to understand their roles and duties when carrying out tasks and accomplishing project objectives. How can all the participants in a project be coordinated so that they are aware of what they are doing and do not prevent others from carrying out their tasks? An assignment of responsibility matrix can be useful.

Your project will have a productive crew thanks to an assignment matrix. You can take an online PMP course to learn the details included in RAM, Responsibility Assignment Matrix in project management, and Responsibility Assignment Matrix example, to advance your career.

What is a Responsibility Assignment Matrix in Project Management?

So, what is the responsibility assignment matrix?  A Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM), sometimes referred to as a RACI chart or RACI matrix, in project management identifies all relevant stakeholders and specifies roles for cross-functional teams and their level of involvement in a project. Each letter in the acronym RACI, which stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed, refers to a different team member in the Responsibility Assignment Matrix in Project Management.

1. Responsible

The team member that oversees finishing the assignment is the person responsible for the RAM, Responsibility Assignment Matrix. The person in charge may be tasked with gathering all the visual and data assets required to put together the presentation if your team is working on a pitch deck (Responsible for executing the task).

2. Accountable

The responsible team member distributes the tasks to the other team members and ensures that they are finished accurately and on time. This team member oversees making sure the project is completed on schedule and that the tasks are fairly distributed among the accountable parties (Has governing & directing authority).

3. Consulted

A responsible party in Responsibility Assignment Matrix Project Management may frequently need to consult an expert, who serves as the consulted person, to finish certain responsibilities. A professional analysis of the consulted party is required when someone is tasked with gathering marketing statistics for a presentation. They also need to ensure that the data the responsible party is required to submit is accurate (Provide insights, analysis or expert judgment).

4. Informed

The informed party needs to be aware of when the major project components are finished even though they may not be directly involved in all the steps to ensure that everything is running smoothly. The informed team member must be aware of any delays or stalls in the project as they must complete their tasks (Updated with project information and outcome).

Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) Goal in Project Management

The goal of the Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) is to clearly define roles and responsibilities of everyone on a project team. This ensures that everyone understands their role and how it fits into the bigger picture. RAM also allows for quick identification of whom to contact when an issue arises. It might also be applied within a working group to establish authority levels, roles, and duties for tasks.

The matrix format displays each person's associated actions and each person's associated people. To avoid confusion, this makes sure that there is only one person responsible for each task. It is also important to outline the dates and reminders for each participant, so that they are aware of their deliverables/plans to fulfill the deliverables. The best Project Management Certification programs online will teach you how to make efficient decisions and effectively use RAM.

How to Create a Responsibility Assignment Matrix?

A Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) is a table that shows the tasks needed to be completed as part of a project, who is responsible for each task, and when the task needs to be completed. Making a matrix to distribute responsibilities is not as challenging as getting everyone on board with their respective jobs and responsibilities.

You should therefore involve your staff in the process, receive their feedback, and eventually secure their buy-in without expending excessive time and effort on it. You will have a successful responsibility assignment if you follow these instructions to ensure that everyone is on the same page. 

• List every person involved in the project, including the team, stakeholders, and everyone in between.
•  List each project deliverable that you can think of. To make sure you do not overlook any, use a work breakdown framework.  
•  To discuss how to carry out the tasks and produce the deliverables, meet with the team members. The duty and authority of the team for each assignment must be discussed.
•  Utilizing a table with the project tasks specified in the left-hand column, create a Responsibility Assignment Matrix. Print the names of everyone involved in the project across the top.
• Assign whether a project team member is liable, accountable, consulted, or informed where the tasks meet them.  
•  Share the completed Responsibility Assignment Matrix Template Word with the project team and stakeholders. If necessary, conduct a meeting to ensure that everyone is aware of their responsibilities for the project. Print a copy, and if you are working in a common location, post it.

Developing Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) Best Practices

The best practices for developing a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) will vary depending on the specific project and organization. However, some tips on how to develop a RAM matrix effectively include the following:

• Define the project scope and objectives clearly, so that all stakeholders understand the parameters of the project and what is expected to be accomplished.
• Assign clear roles and responsibilities to individuals and teams so that everyone knows who is responsible for what aspect of the project.
• Make sure that the Responsibility Assignment Matrix PMP is kept up to date as the project progresses so that everyone is aware of any changes in roles and responsibilities.
• Use the RAM matrix as a tool to help identify potential risks and issues related to the project so that they can be addressed early on.
• One stakeholder leads a task.
• The lesser number of people are accountable, the better.
• Act efficiently with meetings.
• Continuous communication.
• Stakeholder agreement on final RAM.

Responsibility Assignment Matrix Examples and Templates

• Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RACI) 
• RACI-VS (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed- “V”erification and “S”ign off)
• RASCI (Responsible, Accountable, Support, Consulted, Informed)
• RAC (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted)
• ARCI (Accountable, Responsible, Consulted, Informed)
• RATSI (Responsibility, Authority, Task, Support, Informed)
• PACSI (Perform, Accountable, Control, Suggest, Informed)
• RACIQ (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed, Quality Review)
• DACI (Driver, Approver, Contributors, Informed)
• CAIRO (Consulted, Accountable, Informed, Responsible, Omitted)

Downloadable Responsibility Assignment Matrix Template Excel

Download the Responsibility Assignment Matrix Template (xlsx) here!

This Responsibility Assignment Matrix template is available for free in both Excel and OpenDocument Spreadsheet formats. The template can be completely modified using Microsoft Excel and adjusted to meet the needs of your project. To make it simple to understand what is required of each worker on each task, the template employs conditional formatting to change the color of each cell.

Download a Printable Responsibility Assignment Matrix PDF

Download the Responsibility Assignment Matrix Template (PDF) here!

If you intend to design a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM), you may require samples and templates to use as a guide, regardless of whether you are managing an event, a construction project, or a restaurant. Some of the templates are-

• Responsibility Assignment Matrix Sample
• Responsibility Assignment Matrix for Construction Project Template
• Basic Responsibility Assignment Matrix Sample
• Responsibility Assignment Matrix in PDF

Benefits of Responsibility Assignment Matrix

There are many benefits of the Responsibility Assignment Matrix. One benefit is that it helps to ensure that everyone on a project team understands their roles and responsibilities. This can help to prevent misunderstandings and conflict between team members. Another benefit of using RAM is that it can help to improve communication between team members.

By clearly defining roles and responsibilities, team members will know whom to go to for specific information or tasks. This can help to avoid confusion and delays. Lastly, RAM can help to improve project management by providing a clear overview of who is responsible for what. This can help project managers to identify potential problems or areas where there may be a lack of resources.

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A Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) is a tool used to identify and define the roles and responsibilities of individuals and groups within an organization. It is a means of clarifying who is responsible for what and ensuring that everyone understands their roles and responsibilities. RAM can be used to create accountability and ownership for tasks and projects, and to identify potential areas of conflict.

It is a valuable tool for effective project management and can help to ensure that everyone involved in a project is aware of their roles and responsibilities. It can also help to identify potential areas of conflict and ensure that tasks are properly assigned. The KnowledgeHut online PMP course will give you an insight into the Responsibility Assignment Matrix and can be a helpful tool for any project manager.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. what is included in a responsibility assignment matrix.

A Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) is a tool used to help define and assign roles and responsibilities for a project or process. The matrix typically includes a list of tasks or deliverables and the people or groups responsible for each. 

2. What can a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) eliminate?

RAM eliminates ambiguity and confusion over who is responsible for what on a project. It also provides a clear overview of who is responsible for each task, making it easier to hold team members accountable.

3. What does a Responsibility Assignment Matrix not show?

The duty assignment matrix links resources to the tasks or work packages they must do, but it does not indicate when they will be required to do their work.

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Kevin D. Davis is a seasoned and results-driven Program/Project Management Professional with a Master's Certificate in Advanced Project Management. With expertise in leading multi-million dollar projects, strategic planning, and sales operations, Kevin excels in maximizing solutions and building business cases. He possesses a deep understanding of methodologies such as PMBOK, Lean Six Sigma, and TQM to achieve business/technology alignment. With over 100 instructional training sessions and extensive experience as a PMP Exam Prep Instructor at KnowledgeHut, Kevin has a proven track record in project management training and consulting. His expertise has helped in driving successful project outcomes and fostering organizational growth.

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Creating a Resource Allocation Matrix for Resource Planning

Effective resource planning is essential for the success of any business. It involves determining the resources required and allocating them appropriately to ensure that projects are completed on time and within budget. A key tool for efficient resource planning is the resource allocation matrix, also known as the RAM. In this article, we will explore the basics of resource allocation, the benefits of using a RAM, and best practices for developing an effective RAM to enhance your resource planning efforts.

Why Resource Planning is Essential for Business Success

Resource planning is vital for any business that wants to achieve its goals and objectives. Without proper planning, resources can be under-utilized, over-utilized, or misallocated, leading to delays and cost overruns. Effective resource planning ensures that the right resources are available at the right time and in the right quantities. This, in turn, leads to improved productivity, increased efficiency, and better profitability.

Moreover, resource planning also helps businesses to identify potential risks and challenges that may arise during the project execution. By having a clear understanding of the available resources and their limitations, businesses can proactively address any issues that may arise and take necessary measures to mitigate them. This not only helps in avoiding delays and cost overruns but also ensures that the project is completed within the stipulated time frame and budget.

Understanding the Basics of Resource Allocation

Resource allocation is the process of assigning resources to tasks or projects based on their availability, skills, and priorities. Resources can include people, equipment, materials, and finances. It involves balancing the demands for resources against their availability and capabilities. Effective resource allocation requires careful planning, monitoring, and coordination.

One of the key challenges in resource allocation is ensuring that resources are used efficiently and effectively. This requires a thorough understanding of the tasks or projects being undertaken, as well as the capabilities and limitations of the resources being allocated. It is important to regularly review and adjust resource allocation as needed to ensure that resources are being used in the most optimal way possible. Additionally, effective communication and collaboration among team members is crucial to successful resource allocation.

The Benefits of Using a Resource Allocation Matrix

A resource allocation matrix is a powerful tool that provides a clear overview of the resources available and their allocation to different tasks or projects. It allows you to optimize your resource utilization, avoid over- or under-utilization, and improve resource allocation decisions. A RAM helps you to:

• Visualize resource assignments and identify gaps or overlaps in resource allocation
• Analyze resource utilization and identify opportunities for improvement
• Allocate resources based on project priorities and criticality
• Manage resources more efficiently and reduce wastage
• Ensure that projects are completed on time and within budget

Moreover, a resource allocation matrix can also help you to identify potential risks and bottlenecks in your project. By having a clear overview of the resources and their allocation, you can anticipate any potential issues and take proactive measures to mitigate them. This can help you to avoid delays and ensure that your project runs smoothly.

Best Practices for Developing a Resource Allocation Matrix

The key to developing an effective RAM is to follow best practices that are aligned with your organization’s goals and objectives. Here are some guidelines to consider:

• Identify the resources required for each project or task, including people, equipment, materials, and finances
• Determine the availability and capacity of each resource
• Assign priorities and criticality to each project or task
• Develop a framework for allocating resources based on priorities and capacity
• Monitor resource utilization and adjust allocation as needed
• Continuously evaluate and update the RAM to ensure that it meets the changing needs of the organization

It is important to involve all stakeholders in the development of the RAM to ensure that everyone’s needs and priorities are taken into account. This includes project managers, department heads, and other key decision-makers. By involving all stakeholders, you can ensure that the RAM is comprehensive and reflects the needs of the entire organization. Additionally, it is important to communicate the RAM clearly to all stakeholders to ensure that everyone understands how resources are being allocated and why certain decisions were made.

Factors to Consider When Allocating Resources

When allocating resources, it is important to consider the following factors:

• Project or task criticality and priority
• Availability and capacity of resources
• Skills and expertise required
• Costs and budget constraints
• Risk factors and contingencies
• Dependencies and interrelationships among tasks or projects

Another important factor to consider when allocating resources is the timeline or deadline for the project or task. It is crucial to ensure that the resources are allocated in a way that allows for the completion of the project or task within the given timeline. This may require adjusting the allocation of resources or prioritizing certain tasks over others.

Additionally, it is important to consider the impact of resource allocation on the overall organization. Allocating too many resources to one project or task may leave other areas of the organization understaffed or under-resourced. It is important to strike a balance between meeting the needs of individual projects or tasks and ensuring the overall health and success of the organization.

How to Analyze Resource Utilization and Identify Opportunities for Improvement

Resource utilization analysis is essential for identifying areas where resources can be optimized. It involves tracking and analyzing the actual and planned resource usage to identify gaps or inefficiencies. Here are some steps to follow:

• Define the metrics for measuring resource utilization, such as availability, utilization rate, and cost per resource
• Track the actual resource usage against the planned usage
• Analyze the data to identify areas where resources are under-utilized or over-utilized
• Determine the root causes of inefficiencies
• Develop strategies to optimize resource utilization based on the analysis

One of the key benefits of resource utilization analysis is that it can help organizations identify opportunities for improvement. By analyzing resource usage data, organizations can identify areas where resources are being wasted or underutilized, and develop strategies to optimize resource allocation. For example, if the analysis reveals that a particular team is consistently over-utilizing resources, the organization can take steps to redistribute resources or provide additional training to improve efficiency.

Another important aspect of resource utilization analysis is that it can help organizations make more informed decisions about resource allocation. By tracking and analyzing resource usage data, organizations can gain a better understanding of which resources are most critical to their operations, and allocate resources accordingly. This can help organizations avoid over-investing in less critical resources, and ensure that they have the resources they need to achieve their strategic objectives.

Creating a Comprehensive Resource Plan with an Allocation Matrix

A comprehensive resource plan is an effective way to ensure that resources are allocated efficiently and effectively. It involves creating a roadmap for resource allocation and management that is aligned with the organization’s goals and objectives. Here are some steps to follow:

• Identify the resources required for each project or task
• Develop a resource allocation matrix that assigns resources based on priority and criticality
• Integrate the RAM with project management tools and processes
• Provide training and support to your team to ensure that they understand the resource plan and their roles in executing it

It is important to note that a comprehensive resource plan should be reviewed and updated regularly to ensure that it remains relevant and effective. This includes assessing the availability of resources, identifying any changes in project priorities or objectives, and evaluating the impact of any external factors that may affect resource allocation. By regularly reviewing and updating the resource plan, organizations can ensure that they are able to adapt to changing circumstances and continue to allocate resources in the most efficient and effective way possible.

Tips for Managing and Monitoring Resources Effectively

Here are some tips for managing and monitoring resources effectively:

• Develop a resource management plan that outlines your approach to resource allocation and monitoring
• Use project management tools and software to track and manage resource utilization
• Regularly review and update the resource allocation matrix based on changing project priorities, resource availability, and project risks
• Communicate with stakeholders to ensure that they are aware of the resource plan and their roles in executing it
• Provide feedback and recognition to your team for their performance in resource management

Another important tip for managing and monitoring resources effectively is to prioritize tasks based on their importance and urgency. This will help you allocate resources more efficiently and ensure that critical tasks are completed on time. Additionally, it is important to identify potential resource constraints early on in the project and develop contingency plans to address them.

Finally, it is essential to monitor resource utilization regularly to identify any inefficiencies or areas for improvement. This can be done through regular performance reviews, data analysis, and feedback from team members. By continuously monitoring and optimizing resource utilization, you can ensure that your project stays on track and that resources are being used effectively.

Measuring the Success of Your Resource Allocation Matrix

Measuring the success of your RAM involves tracking and evaluating key performance indicators (KPIs) related to resource utilization and efficiency. Some KPIs to consider are:

• Resource availability and utilization rate
• Project completion rate
• Budget variance
• Customer satisfaction
• Employee engagement and productivity

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Implementing a Resource Allocation Matrix

Here are some common mistakes to avoid when implementing a RAM:

• Assigning resources based on availability rather than project priorities
• Ignoring the capacity constraints of resources
• Not monitoring resource utilization or adjusting allocation as needed
• Not communicating the resource plan or changes to the plan effectively
• Not providing adequate training or support to your team

Integrating Your Resource Allocation Matrix with Project Management Tools

Integrating your RAM with project management tools and processes can help you to streamline your resource management efforts. Here are some benefits of integration:

• Automated resource allocation and real-time monitoring
• Improved collaboration and communication among team members
• Better visibility into project progress and resource utilization
• Reduced administrative tasks and paperwork

Training Your Team on Efficient Resource Management Strategies

Training your team on efficient resource management strategies is critical to the success of your RAM. Here are some strategies to consider:

• Provide training on the basics of resource allocation and management
• Incorporate resource management best practices into your team’s workflows
• Encourage communication and collaboration among team members
• Train team members on how to use project management tools and software effectively
• Provide ongoing training and coaching to help your team improve their resource management skills

Preparing for Unexpected Changes in Resource Availability

Unexpected changes in resource availability can disrupt your resource allocation plan and impact project timelines and budgets. Here are some tips for preparing for and managing changes:

• Develop contingency plans for unexpected resource shortages or delays
• Monitor resource availability and capacity regularly
• Communicate changes in resource availability to stakeholders and team members promptly
• Adjust resource allocation as needed to ensure that projects remain on track
• Collaborate with stakeholders on alternative solutions or approaches to manage resource constraints

Conclusion: Why Every Business Needs a Resource Allocation Matrix

Effective resource planning and management are critical to the success of any business. A resource allocation matrix is a powerful tool that can help you to optimize your resource utilization and achieve your project goals more efficiently and effectively. By following the best practices outlined in this article and continually evaluating and updating your RAM, you can ensure that your organization is well-equipped to meet the challenges of resource planning and management.

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Creating a Resource Matrix in Project Management

Efficient resource allocation is a critical aspect of successful project management. Without a clear understanding of available resources and how they align with project tasks, organizations can face challenges such as missed deadlines, budget overruns, and compromised project quality. To overcome these hurdles, project managers rely on a powerful tool known as the resource matrix. Here we will explore what a resource matrix is, its benefits, and how to create one to optimize resource allocation in project management.

Project Resource Planning: Understanding Different Approaches

For each project manager, there’s their own favorite way to create the project management schedule. There are the ones that still prefer to plan on a whiteboard . Ones that have found a spreadsheet-based resource planning template that works for them.

There are the ones that plan create a work breakdown structure and then schedule the tasks using it. While, some project managers like to assign the resources right away and those that prefer to schedule the tasks first.

Here’s a breakdown of some of these approaches and the different tools used to reach the goals set.

Project Resource Management Techniques

• Project-based resource planning That’s where projects are at the top of the project management food chain and resources are just means to an end. Project resource planning is often more about planning, rather than optimization. It’s allocating resources to tasks, not the other way around. Here it’s all about staffing projects and ensuring capacity for project tasks. With little to no emphasis on optimizing resource utilization.
• Resource-based project planning In resource-based project planning, the approach is reversed compared to project-based planning. The main goal here is to keep resource utilization at an optimal level . Tasks are allocated to available resources, and project planning takes a backseat. The emphasis is on efficiently utilizing resources while project considerations are secondary.
• Matrix planning Matrix planning combines the best aspects of both project-based and resource-based approaches. It focuses on task allocation while considering both resource capacity and project capacity. The goal is to maximize project efficiency by ensuring resources are allocated optimally. This approach involves planning for individual projects and pivoting the resource plan to assess how it aligns with overall resource utilization. Matrix planning strikes a balance between project requirements and resource optimization.

Basically though, if you’re a manager who plans resources and projects. Seeing how both fit together is optimal. That way you always know if the project you have scheduled will have the right capacity to get it done. Without worrying if you’re overburdening anyone in the process. That’s where a resource matrix comes into play.

Understanding the Resource Matrix

A resource matrix, also known as a staffing matrix or resource allocation chart, is a visual representation that maps project tasks or activities against the resources required to complete them. It provides an overview of the project’s resource needs and helps in identifying potential bottlenecks or imbalances in resource allocation. The matrix typically includes information such as the names or roles of team members, their availability, skills, and the tasks they are responsible for.

In general, matrix planning is a resource management technique where you lay out your projects and resources as a visual plan. This allows you to see the connected resources to projects and vice versa. This management technique puts equal emphasis on projects and resources, and the way to achieve this means seeing the project and resource schedules from all possible angles.

The reason why managers love it so much is that it gives the best possible overview of how everything comes together. It’s the big picture and the small details all in one.

Benefits of a Resource Matrix

Matrix planning takes the best of both worlds of project and resource planning. With it you can ensure that resources are allocated to maximize project efficiency. While also taking into account utilization. It’s planning for one project and pivoting the resource plan to see how it all comes together. This in turn creates some big benefits for your organization and staff. Including:

• Efficient Resource Allocation – By creating a resource matrix, project managers gain a clear understanding of the availability and skills of team members, enabling them to allocate resources optimally. This prevents overloading certain individuals or departments while ensuring all project tasks are adequately staffed.
• Improved Planning and Scheduling – A resource matrix helps in aligning project timelines with resource availability. It allows project managers to identify potential resource constraints and make informed decisions regarding task sequencing and scheduling.
• Risk Identification and Mitigation – With a resource matrix, project managers can proactively identify potential resource gaps or bottlenecks that may impact project delivery . By identifying risks early on, they can take appropriate measures to mitigate them, such as hiring additional resources or redistributing tasks.
• Enhanced Collaboration and Communication – A resource matrix facilitates transparent communication among team members and stakeholders. It helps everyone involved understand the resource requirements and availability, fostering collaboration and enabling effective decision-making.

Creating a Resource Matrix

When you’re ready to begin giving matrix planning a shot, here’s the steps to take in creating one.

• Identify Project Tasks Begin by listing all the tasks or activities required to complete the project. Break them down into smaller, manageable components to ensure comprehensive coverage. This is your classic work breakdown structure (WBS), that usually comes at the beginning of project scheduling.
• Determine Resource Requirements Now add to your resourcing demands. Achieve this by assessing the skills and expertise needed for each task. Then you can begin to identify the resources (team members, departments, or external contractors) that possess those skills. Consider factors such as availability, workload, and any constraints or dependencies.
• Design the Matrix Create a grid or table where each row represents a resource, and each column represents a project task. Fill in the matrix with the names or roles of resources against the tasks they are responsible for. While a simple table in Excel works, a resource-based Gantt chart can be even better for this step!
• Add Resource Details Include relevant information about each resource, such as availability (e.g., hours per week), skill sets, and any specific constraints or dependencies. This data will assist in making informed decisions once you begin executing your projects. Tip! In resource planning software, use custom resource data fields to fill out this info.
• Review and Adjust Regularly review and update the resource matrix as the project progresses. This ensures that changes in resource availability, project priorities, or task dependencies are reflected accurately, allowing for agile resource allocation.

Matrix Planning in Ganttic

A resource matrix is the first step to better project management. And a simple one can be created in any kind of Gantt chart software or even with a template in Excel. As long as you get the visual overview of your resource pool and task list, that’s what counts.

But to ensure your projects are aligned with resource capacity, you’ll need to switch up how you see the matrix.

In Ganttic’s Single Project View , you can switch between Resource and Task modes. This allows you to schedule unassigned tasks which can later be assigned to the right resource once you’re ready. From there it’s simple to flip back and forth from a Project View and a Resource View. Giving you a complete overview from different angles.

Here we’ll get you how to set yourself up to do your own project resource matrix planning.

1. Add a new Project to Ganttic

The first thing you’ll need to do is add a new project to your planner. Customize this and add in details by filling out the custom data fields . These include signifiers like the project reference number, project manager, the status of the project, or the different milestones and phases of the project.

2. Open a Single Project View

Next, you open the project in a Single Project View . From there it’s simple to start scheduling tasks for the project without worrying about the resources. Some like to define the tasks beforehand, others do it on the go.

If you need some tips on how to estimate task duration, read our blog post here .

3. Add Tasks

Begin creating your WBS by adding tasks to the project. All tasks added in a Single Project View will automatically be connected to the larger project. There’s 2 kinds of tasks that can be added, those with resources (assigned tasks) and those without (unassigned tasks). Proceed as you see fits.

Adding assigned tasks:

Choose the All Resources mode and simply drag and drop the tasks to a resource. All tasks created this way will automatically have a resource attached. Once it’s scheduled, the Task Edit Dialog will appear. That’s for you to add any additional details if needed.

In this mode, you’ll see the placeholders for any other work assigned to your resources. This ensures that no one is overbooked in the process. You can also turn on availability settings, so you track the available time each resource has, even if it’s work on other projects.

Task placeholders and Resource availability can be hidden or adjusted in the Visibility Settings.

Check in on any of the assigned tasks in the Project Resources mode . This will only display the ongoing work and timeline for this one project. As well as only that project’s resources.

Adding unassigned tasks:

If you don’t know what resource is the best fit yet, then choose the Task mode . These tasks can be as detailed as you like. You don’t even have to add a title if you’re not sure yet!

Now, you’ll have a bunch of unassigned tasks. However, these tasks will be automatically connected to the project so you can easily differentiate them in the general resource plan using project colors .

4. Allocate Resources

If you use unassigned tasks, you will now need to begin assigning the right resources for the jobs. Again, there are many roads to take.

For those of you that are here just for the high-level resource planning, switch to the All Resources mode . This will display the entire resource pool. From here you can simply drag the tasks to the resource you’d like to take on the work.

If you want to assign the task to multiple resources (for example to different team members plus a piece of equipment), you can do it using the + that appears next to resource title once you open the Task Edit Dialog.

If you are for a more organic approach to project management scheduling, you can also do things a bit differently. Since research has shown that the best and most efficient approach to resource management is the kind that involves the resources, we recommend you to take that road. See which resources are available and hold a meeting . Maybe have a framework in mind and discuss the tasks. From there, let the top performers choose the tasks that they want to take on. If you have your planner open, you can even add the tasks as you go. Now that’s transparent, effective scheduling!

Narrow down the resource pool by adding filters (based on skills sets, certifications, location, and other criteria you’ve outlined with custom data fields) and availability settings (such as available time, or utilization rate).

5. Monitor the Resource and Project Matrices

For a full matrix planning experience, change between these modes and even different Views. While the Single Project View offers a detailed plan of one project, it’s also good to take on the big picture. So designing and utilizing an All Projects View will give you a complete overview of the entire portfolio.

No matter your preferential way of planning Ganttic has you covered. Hop on over to our Help Desk for more tips on planning. Or book a free demo at anytime.

Choose Your Planning Style with Ganttic

Efficient resource allocation is crucial for project success, and a resource matrix serves as a valuable tool in achieving this goal. Begin today by incorporating this powerful technique into your project management arsenal to optimize resource allocation and drive successful project outcomes.

When it comes to project management, having a clear vision and knowing what you want is half the battle. With Ganttic, you have the power to build your ideal workflow from start to finish. Whether you’re initiating a project, planning tasks, allocating resources, or visualizing your project timeline. Ganttic’s matrix planning approach to project resource management provides the flexibility and control you need to bring your vision to life. With Ganttic, you have the perfect companion to transform your ideas into successful projects, making your journey as a project manager smoother and more efficient.

Make your vision a reality.

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• Project Management Plan
• Change Management Plan
• Project Roadmap
• Scope Management Plan
• Requirements Management Plan
• Requirements Documentation
• Requirements raceability Matrix
• Project Scope Statement
• Work Breakdown Structure
• WBS Dictionary
• Schedule Management Plan
• Activity list
• Activity attributes
• Milestone list
• Network diagram
• Duration estimates
• Duration estimates worksheet
• Project schedule
• Cost management plan
• Cost estimates
• Cost estimating worksheet
• Cost baseline
• Quality management plan
• Quality metrics

Responsibility assignment matrix (RAM)

• Resource management plan
• Team charter
• Resource requirements
• Resource breakdown structure
• Communications management plan
• Risk management plan
• Risk register
• Risk report
• Probability and impact assessment
• Probability and impact matrix
• Risk data sheet
• Procurement management plan
• Procurement strategy
• Source selection criteria
• Stakeholder engagement plan
• Comment Create task

The responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) shows the intersection of work packages and resources. Generally, RAMs are used to show the different levels of participation on a work package by various team members rather than physical resources. RAMs can indicate different types of participation depending on the needs of the project. Some common types include:

• Accountable
• Responsible

The RAM always should include a key that explains what each of the levels of participation entails. An example follows using a RACI chart, as demonstrated in the PMBOK ® Guide – Sixth Edition. The needs of your project should determine the fields for the RAM you use.

The responsibility assignment matrix can receive information from:

• Scope baseline
• Requirements documentation
• Stakeholder register

It is a data representation tool that provides information to the resource management plan in process

• Plan Resource Management in the PMBOK ® Guide – Sixth Edition. It is progressively elaborated as more information about the scope and the resource requirements is known.

Tailoring tips

Consider the following tips to help tailor the RAM to meet your needs:

• Tailor the types of participation appropriate for your Some projects require “sign-off” of specific deliverables, whereas others use the term “approve.”
• Determine the appropriate level to record information on the Large projects with multiple vendors and large deliverables often use the RAM as the intersection of the WBS and the OBS (organizational breakdown structure). Small projects may use it at the deliverable or activity level to help enter schedule information.

The RAM should be aligned and consistent with the following documents:

• Work breakdown structure
• Procurement documents (RFP, RFQ, etc.)

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A template-based approach for responsibility management in executable business processes

Cristina cabanillas.

a Institute for Information Business , Vienna University of Economics and Business , Vienna, Austria

Manuel Resinas

b Depto. Lenguajes y Sistemas Informáticos , University of Seville , Seville, Spain

Antonio Ruiz-Cortés

Process-oriented organisations need to manage the different types of responsibilities their employees may have w.r.t. the activities involved in their business processes. Despite several approaches provide support for responsibility modelling, in current Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) the only responsibility considered at runtime is the one related to performing the work required for activity completion. Others like accountability or consultation must be implemented by manually adding activities in the executable process model, which is time-consuming and error-prone. In this paper, we address this limitation by enabling current BPMS to execute processes in which people with different responsibilities interact to complete the activities. We introduce a metamodel based on Responsibility Assignment Matrices (RAM) to model the responsibility assignment for each activity, and a flexible template-based mechanism that automatically transforms such information into BPMN elements, which can be interpreted and executed by a BPMS. Thus, our approach does not enforce any specific behaviour for the different responsibilities but new templates can be modelled to specify the interaction that best suits the activity requirements. Furthermore, libraries of templates can be created and reused in different processes. We provide a reference implementation and build a library of templates for a well-known set of responsibilities.

1. Introduction

Organisations need to manage the different types of responsibilities that their employees may have with respect to all the activities that are daily carried out within them. Process-oriented organisations need to do it, in addition, in accordance to the business processes in place. In this context, responsibilites are defined at different levels. As evidenced by several studies, there are four acknowledged process positions (business process director, business process consultant, business process architect and business process analyst) and a specific set of responsibilities associated to each of them (Antonucci and Goeke 2011 ). However, organisations need to control not only the execution of processes as a whole but also the execution of every single activity carried out within them, which relates to a key role in process execution: the process participants. Activities often require the collaboration among several people with different responsibilities, e.g., people responsible for performing the work, people acting as consultants who provide valuable input for the completion of the activity, and people accountable for the results. Therefore, there are also responsibilities at activity level involving, among others, accountability and consultation.

Business Process Management Systems (BPMSs) stand out of Process-Aware Information Systems (PAISs) as a mechanism for process automation. Specifically, the purpose of a BPMS is to coordinate an automated business process so that the work is done at the right time by the right resource (Dumas et al. 2013 ). They rely on the description of business processes as process models represented with different notations, such as (EPC) (Mendling, Neumann, and Nüttgens 2005 ) or the de-facto standard Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) (OMG 2011 ). However, although BPMSs use business process models for automation, there is still a gap between these executable process models and business-oriented process models used for communication and analysis. Because of their intent, the latter are not as precise and complete as an executable process model must be (Dumas et al. 2013 ). As a consequence, different methodologies (Dumas et al. 2013 ) and techniques (Graml, Bracht, and Spies 2008 ; Caron and Vanthienen 2016 ) for transforming business-oriented process models into executable ones have been developed. Still, this transformation is known to be slow and error prone (Alotaibi and Liu 2017 ).

In this paper, we focus on this issue in the context of responsibility management. Nowadays, BPMSs are increasingly providing support for modelling activities that involve several people with different responsibilities using advanced resource assignment languages (Cabanillas et al. 2015b ) or supplementary models like RACI matrices (Cabanillas, Resinas, and Ruiz-Cortés 2011b ). However, this support tends to be limited to documentation and reporting purposes. Just a few BPMSs consider several responsibilities associated to an activity during process execution and the existing support suffers from generalisability and flexibility issues. Concepts like accountability or consultation, common in the domain of responsibility management, have to be implemented during the transformation from business-oriented process models to executable process models by manually adding activities for them. Furthermore, this has to be done for each activity that involves several responsibilities in all automated business processes in the organisation, which is time-consuming and error-prone as these transformation tasks usually are (Alotaibi and Liu 2017 ). Moreover, if the responsibilities defined for an activity change, the activities added manually to the process model may also change, which adds additional work that may be significant given the continuous organisational changes (Aldin and de Cesare 2011 ).

Two facts have contributed to the lack of advanced support for responsibility management. First, most process model notations used in current BPMSs for process execution support only one type of responsibility by default, despite some of them like BPMN allow including additional responsibilities in an ad-hoc fashion (OMG 2011 ). This lack of standardisation for managing various types of responsibilities discourages BPMS developers to support different responsibilities in their systems. Second, the way people with different responsibilities interact within an activity is domain-specific. At least, it depends on the organisation and the activity. For instance, some activities may require partial approvals of the work being performed for their completion, whereas for others, such an approval may only be required at the end of the execution or not required at all. Therefore, supporting different responsibilities is not only a matter of assigning new tasks to a worklist, but it is also necessary to find a mechanism that coordinates them in a flexible way.

In this paper, we automate this transition from busines-oriented to executable business processes in the context of responsibility management by enabling current BPMSs to execute processes in which people with different responsibilities interact to perform process activities. The approach involves two artifacts. On the one hand, we address the modelling of different responsibilities by extending a (RAM) (Website 2016 ) with information required for process execution. On the other hand, we introduce a template-based technique for transforming such information into BPMN elements that can be interpreted by a BPMS so that existing BPMN execution support suffices to automate process models that involve activities with several people with different responsibilities. This idea was previously described in Cabanillas, Resinas, and Ruiz-Cortés ( 2012 ) but the work has been extended in several directions, in particular: (i) our current approach does no longer enforce any specific behaviour for the people with different responsibilities that work together in an activity, but new templates can be modelled to specify the interaction that best suits the requirements of each activity. In fact, the whole template-based mechanism is new; (ii) our current approach is not limited to a restricted set of responsibilities anymore, hence gaining generalisability; and (iii) we have refined the previous metamodel and its semantics has been properly defined.

Our approach has two additional advantages. First, it is independent of the platform and hence, the models obtained can be used by any BPMS that supports BPMN . Second, the original structure of the process model remains unchanged after including the templates defined for modelling responsibilities, since the modifications are done at subprocess level. This provides transparency and does not affect the readability of the original model.

The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 describes a scenario that will be used throughout the paper as a running example. Section 3 summarises the related work. Section 4 motivates the work in line with the research method used. Section 5 presents our approach for modelling responsibility aspects in process activities. Section 6 introduces our template-based approach for generating resource-aware BPMN models. Section 7 describes the ways in which we have validated the approach. Section 8 reflects on advantages and limitations of the approach. Finally, Section 9 outlines the conclusions and directions for future work.

2. Running example

The following example is used to illustrate the importance of supporting the collaboration of several people with different responsibilities in a process activity.

Table 1 depicts an excerpt of an organisational model for a project called HRMS. Specifically, it shows the organisational roles assigned to the resources that contribute to the project. 1 Figure 1 shows a simplified version of the procedure to manage the trip to a conference according to the rules of the University of Seville (Spain). In particular, it represents a collaboration between two processes modelled with BPMN 2.0 2 (OMG 2011 ): one process is developed at pool Research Vice-chancellorship and the other at pool ISA Research Group , to which the organisational model previously described belongs. That process starts when a researcher requests for authorisation to attend the conference, for which an authorisation form is filled out with the details of the applicant and the funding source, and sent for external assessment to the Vice-chancellorship. After evaluation, a notification from the Vice-chancellorship is received informing about the approval or rejection of the request, which will be checked by the researcher . In the absence of problems, the researcher must register at the conference and make the reservations required.

Excerpt of the organisational model for project HRMS (WP = Work Package).

Business process to manage the trip to attend a conference.

The previous description of the process is only half of the picture because it assumes that only one person is involved in each activity, in this case a certain researcher. However, for most activities several people are actually involved in them with different responsibilities. For instance, the coordinator of the project that will finance the trip expenses is accountable for activity Prepare Authorisation and the clerk of the project helps the researcher in this task by providing the information required about the funding source; in addition, the account administrator and the leader of the project’s work package related to the subject of the paper to be presented in the conference (or the subject of the conference, in case of no accepted publications) must be informed about the trip request. Following up on this, the project coordinator and the account administrator are informed about the result of the request when executing activity Check Response. In activity Register at Conference, the project coordinator can be consulted about details on the registration process, such as the type of registration, and both the project coordinator and the account administrator must be informed after the registration has been done. Finally, in activity Make Reservations, the clerk of the project can help the researcher, if required, and the account administrator and the project coordinator can also be consulted about details on this activity.

The challenge is to model all those details and come up with a responsibility-aware process model that can be executed taking the responsibilities into account.

3. Related work

Responsibility management in business processes is a part of resource management in business processes, which involves the assignment of resources to process activities at design time as potential participants and the allocation of resources to activities at run time as actual participants.

Resource assignment languages (van der Aalst and ter Hofstede 2005 ; Cabanillas et al. 2015b ; Bertino, Ferrari, and Atluri 1999 ; Strembeck and Mendling 2011 ; Casati et al. 1996 ; Scheer 2000 ; Du et al. 1999 ; Tan, Crampton, and Gunter 2004 ; Cabanillas et al. 2015a ; Wolter and Schaad 2007 ; Awad et al. 2009 ; Stroppi, Chiotti, and Villarreal 2011 ) serve the former purpose by enabling the definition of the conditions that the members of an organisation must meet in order to be allowed to participate in the activities of the processes executed in it, e.g., to belong to a specific department or to have certain skills. The outcome is a resource-aware process model . The set of conditions that can be defined depicts the expressiveness of the language and is usually evaluated with a subset of the well-known workflow resource patterns (Russell et al. 2005 ), namely, the creation patterns, which include, among others: Direct, Organisational, Role-Based , and Capability-Based Distribution , or the ability to specify the identity, position, role or capabilities of the resource that will take part in a task, respectively; (SoD) , or the ability to specify that two tasks must be allocated to different resources in a given process instance; and Retain Familiar (also known as Binding of Duties (BoD)) , or the ability to allocate an activity instance within a given process instance to the same resource that performed a preceding activity instance. A comparison of resource assignment languages can be found in Cabanillas et al. ( 2015b ).

Resource allocation techniques aim at distributing actual work to appropriate resources so that process instances are completed properly, e.g, in terms of high quality and low time and cost (Havur et al. 2015 ). All process engines must be provided with some resource allocation mechanism(s) in order to automate process execution.

Traditional resource management in business processes considers that a process activity requires the workforce of one single resource who is in charge of the activity from the beginning to the end of its execution. However, common scenarios like the one described in Section 2 show the importance of other types of responsibilities, which tend to be disregarded by existing resource management approaches. In the following, we review the current state of the art on responsibility management in business processes, which is the problem addressed in this paper, and then report on approaches for process modelling based on templates, which relates to our solution.

3.1. Responsibility management in business processes

In this section, we first introduce a generic responsibility management mechanism that is independent of process modelling notations or BPMS . Afterwards, we explore the related work for responsibility management in business processes in three groups: (i) the support provided by existing process modelling notations, (ii) the support provided by current modelling software tools and BPMS, and (iii) research proposals developed to bridge existing gaps.

3.1.1. Responsibility assignment matrices (RAMs)

A Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) provides a way to plan, organise and coordinate work that consists of assigning different degrees of responsibility to the members of an organisation for each activity undertaken in it (Website 2016 ). RAMs were defined independently of Business Process Management (BPM) and thus, they are suitable for both process- and non process-oriented organisations. In the context of RAMs, the different responsibilities that may be assigned to an activity are usually called roles or task duties (Cabanillas et al. 2015b ).

RAMs are becoming a recommendation for the representation of the distribution of work in organisations. As a matter of fact, a specific type of RAMs called RACI (ARIS 2012 ) is a component of Six Sigma, 3 a methodology to improve the service or product that a company offers to its customers. There are also ongoing efforts to map RACI to the LEAN and CMMI for Services (CMMI-SVC) frameworks (Nuzen and Dayton 2011 ). The former defines a set of principles for continuous process improvement. The latter provides guidance for applying Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) best practices in a service provider organisation. Similarly, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework defines the ITIL RACI matrices 4 as the way to illustrate the participation of the ITIL roles in the ITIL processes. ITIL is the worldwide de-facto standard for service management. Specifically, it uses a modality of RAMs called RASCI (Website 2014 ), which relies on the following five responsibilities:

• Responsible (R) : person who must perform the work, responsible for the activity until the work is finished and approved by the person accountable for the activity. There is typically only one person responsible for an activity.
• Accountable – also Approver or Final Approving Authority – (A) : person who must approve the work performed by the person responsible for an activity, and who becomes responsible for it after approval. There is generally one person accountable for each activity.
• Support (S) : person who may assist in completing an activity by actively contributing in its execution, i.e., the person in charge can delegate work to her. In general, there may be several people assigned to this responsibility for an activity instance.
• Consulted – sometimes Counsel – (C) : person whose opinion is sought while performing the work, and with whom there is two-way communication. She helps to complete the activity in a passive way. In general, there may be several people assigned to this responsibility for an activity instance.
• Informed (I) : person who is kept up-to-date about the progress of an activity and/or the results of the work, and with whom there is just one-way communication. In general, there may be more than one person informed about an activity.

Table 2 illustrates an example of a RAM for the scenario described in Section 2 , specifically a RASCI matrix. The rows represent the process activities, the columns of the matrix are organisational roles, 5 and each cell contains zero or more RASCI initials indicating the responsibility of that role on that activity.

RASCI matrix for the process at pool ISA Research Group.

Note that RAMs are intended to be a responsibility modelling mechanism and are not provided with support for automated analysis that could help to use them together with business processes during process execution. Their expressive power is high in terms of the number of responsibilities that can be assigned but low regarding the number of workflow resource patterns supported, as constraints like sod and bod cannot be defined.

3.1.2. Process modelling notations

The default support for responsibility management in current process modelling notations is limited. BPMN 2.0 (OMG 2011 ), the de-facto standard for process modelling, provides a mechanism to assign responsibilities to an activity. However, the only responsibility type that is defined by default is Responsible (so-called Potential Owner in BPMN). Other types of responsibilities can be added by extending the BPMN metamodel. In addition, nothing is said about the implications of adding new responsibilities during process execution.

The EPC notation (Dumas, van der Aalst, and ter Hofstede 2005 ) is more expressive than BPMN for resource modelling in the sense that it provides a specific representation of organisational units and allows defining organisational relations. However, to the best of our knowledge there is no support for responsibilities other than the resource in charge of executing the activity.

The so-called activity partitions of Unified Modeling Language (UML) Activity Diagrams (Russell et al. 2006 ) are classifiers similar to the BPMN swimlanes, although enriched with dimensions for hierarchical modelling. Therefore, they allow grouping process activities according to any criterion, which includes organisational information. Besides that, this modelling approach is very little expressive in terms of the support provided for the creation patterns (Russell et al. 2005 ). There is no notion of responsibility modelling either.

Finally, BPEL4People (OASIS 2009 ) is an extension of the BPEL notation (OASIS 2007 ) based on the WS-HumanTask specification (OASIS 2010 ), which enables the integration of human beings in service-oriented applications. It provides support for the execution of business processes with three types of responsibilities, namely: Responsible, Accountable and Informed. However, although it provides a rather flexible mechanism for defining the notifications that the people with responsibility Informed receive, the participation of people with responsibility Accountable is limited to intervening when a deadline is missed. Other forms of interaction, such as checking that an activity was correctly performed, are not allowed.

3.1.3. Modelling software tools and BPMS

Modelling software tools, such as Visual Paradigm, 6 facilitate the automatic generation of a RACI matrix from a resource-aware BPMN model. Specifically, the responsibility type Responsible can be automatically extracted and the RACI matrix can then be manually filled out to include information about the other types of responsibilities. However, the output is just used for documentation purposes, since BPMN does not support the definition of responsibilities Accountable, Consulted and Informed.

Signavio Process Editor 7 also allows for defining RACI responsibilities in process models by making use of BPMN elements. While those models can be used for generating reports subsequently, process engines will not take into account the responsibilities Accountable, Consulted and Informed for automatic process execution.

The support for responsibility management is a novel functionality in BPMSs . Bizagi 8 and ARIS (Scheer 2000 ) allow for the definition of RASCI responsibilities in BPMN models by making use of extended attributes in process activities. Nevertheless, similar to the tools focused on modelling, only the responsibility Responsible is considered for execution and the rest are used for process documentation and reporting. RACI matrices can be defined in the Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 9 aside of a process model for broader documentation of the responsibilities involved in the process (Cumberlidge 2007 ). To the best of our knowledge, only (YAWL) (Adams 2016 ) slightly supports responsibility-aware process execution by means of the concept of secondary resources (human and non-human), which may assist in the completion of the work (hence providing support). Any kind of support for responsibility modelling and execution other than Responsible is still missing, however, in other BPMSs, such as Camunda 10 and Bonita BPM. 11

3.1.4. Research proposals

Due to the limitations of the process modelling notations and systems for responsibility management a few research proposals have been developed to support the assignment of different responsibilities to process activities and the automation of such responsibility-aware process models. In particular, Grosskopf ( 2007 ) extended BPMN 1.0 to support accountability.

Resource Assignment Language (RAL) (Cabanillas et al. 2015b ; Cabanillas, Resinas, and Ruiz-Cortés 2011a ) is an expressive language for defining resource assignments that supports all the creation patterns (Russell et al. 2005 ). RAL is independent of the process modelling notation. Therefore, it can be decoupled from the process model or it can be integrated in it, as shown in Cabanillas, Resinas, and Ruiz-Cortés ( 2011 ) with BPMN. Furthermore, RAL is suited to be used for modelling any kind of responsibility as long as that is supported by the process modelling notation with which it is used.

A graphical notation with a similar expressive power than RAL (RALph) was designed to allow for graphically defining resource assignments in process models (Cabanillas et al. 2015a ). Similarly to the case of RAL, RALph is not actually equipped with support for modelling specific responsibilities. Therefore, that support depends on the process modelling notation with which RALph is used. Otherwise, the notation should be extended.

To a greater or lesser extent, these proposals only address responsibility modelling and they do not provide details about the implications on the execution of the responsibility-aware process models generated.

Since process execution is also a concern and the different responsibilities modelled with a process should also be considered at run time, the approach described in Cabanillas, Resinas, and Ruiz-Cortés ( 2011b ) presented a pattern-based mechanism for including specific activities in a BPMN model that represent accountability, support, consultancy and notification functions. The result is thus a responsibility-aware executable process model that can be automated by BPMN process engines. However, due to the extra elements added in order to include RASCI responsibilities, the model is likely to become unreadable and deviate from the original one, hence turning out to be less eligible for other purposes, such as documentation, due to the large amount of implementation details. As an illustrative example, applying this technique to the scenario described in Section 2 , the number of process activities would increase from 5 to 15. Moreover, the RASCI patterns defined are fixed and hence, there is no flexibility for adapting the joint use of the responsibilities to the organisational needs. Our preliminary work in this area (Cabanillas, Resinas, and Ruiz-Cortés 2012 ) also generated executable process models provided with RASCI information avoiding the aforementioned readability problem. However, flexibility remained an issue, as the way of including responsibilities in the process model was fixed.

3.2. Template-based process modelling

Process templates have been defined with different notations and used for different purposes and in different domains. For instance, BPMN templates were defined for generating so-called business process studios by means of model transformations (Mos and Cortés-Cornax 2016 ). Configurable processes rely on process fragments or templates for adapting an abstract process to a specific context. They have been used, e.g., for addressing the problem of variability in service implementation, a.k.a. service differentiation, with BPEL (Tao and Yang 2007 ) as well as the problem of reference model implementation with Configurable epc (C-EPC) (Recker et al. 2005 ). In addition, configurable processes have been applied in industry to solve real problems, as described in Gottschalk, van der Aalst, and Jansen-Vullers ( 2007 ) for SAP processes.

Most of these approaches, however, focus on control-flow aspects of business process and disregard other perspectives. Nevertheless, notations like the one presented in La Rosa et al. ( 2011 ) allow for defining configurable process models considering control flow, data and resources. These three perspectives are also supported by a template-based approach for modelling process performance indicators (del-Río-Ortega et al. 2016 ).

Support for responsibility management in business processes.  √ indicates that the feature is supported,  ≈  indicates that the feature is partly supported, − indicates that the feature is not supported, and n/a indicates that the evaluation criterion is not applicable.

All the previous approaches have shown benefits for the purpose they were conceived. However, none of them has taken into consideration activity responsibilities since they did not specifically focus on the organisational perspective of business processes.

4. Motivation and research method

To conduct this research we have followed design science principles as suggested by Hevner et al. ( 2004 ) and, in particular, we have applied the design science research methodology (DSRM) (Peffers et al. 2007 ) as follows:

• The responsibilities supported, in most cases in terms of the well-known RASCI responsibilities (Website 2014 ).
• The way in which responsibilities are modelled, differentiating between ‘in’ (i.e., the resource-related information is represented within the process model) and ‘out’ (i.e., the resource-related information is separated from the process model). This relates to the degree of decoupling.
• The support for the automated execution of processes including the different responsibilities.

Several conclusions can be drawn from this analysis. First, many proposals from industry (notations, modelling tools and BPMS) recognise the importance of modelling different types of responsibilities for each activity and provide some kind of support for them, although this support is limited to modelling and documentation purposes, i.e., business-oriented process models.

Second, the RASCI concepts seem to be the most extended mechanism to model responsibility management in business processes. Indeed, many software modelling tools and BPMS use them and automatically generate RAMs to model or document responsibilities. The biggest limitation of this way of proceeding is that the expressiveness of RAMs for resource assignment in business processes is restricted to three creation patterns, namely, Direct-based Distribution, Role-based Distribution and Organisational Distribution . Patterns like SoD or BoD are not supported by default by RAMs . This is not a significant problem if RAMs are used solely for documentation purposes because they can be accompanied with a description of these concerns in natural language. However, it is an important limitation if RAMs were used as the model to guide the automated execution of a process in a BPMS.

Finally, the support for automating the resulting responsibility-aware process models is limited. When existing, it either does not cover all the RASCI responsibilities or is not flexible enough to accommodate different interaction patterns between the people that collaborate in an activity with different responsibilities.

The result is that there is a gap between the responsibility types that are modelled in business-oriented process models such as the one described in the running example ( Section 2 ) or the use case ( Section 7.3 ) and the ability of BPMSs to automate their execution. Consequently, to enforce their correct execution, it is necessary to implement them by manually adding activities for them in the executable process model. This is not desirable, especially when the process model has many activities (it is not uncommon to find process models with more than 15 activities (Mendling, Reijers, and van der Aalst 2010 )) and there are several responsibilities for each activity (which is not uncommon either, e.g., in best practice frameworks). For instance, in our running example, despite its small size, at least 8 activities have to be added manually to model all responsibilities, one for each responsibility type assigned to an activity. The problem gets even worse when either the process or the responsibility assignment changes, because the modified process has to be changed by hand again. This involves first checking what has changed, then understanding the impact of this change in the modified process model and finally, changing the modified process model appropriately. This time-consuming and error-prone task is the problem we are facing in this research.

• G1. Generalisability: in order to adapt to the organisational structure, the responsibility modelling technique should be able to deal with any kind of responsibility instead of sticking to a predefined set of them
• G2. Flexibility: in order to increase usability, the approach should leave freedom to each organisation to define how the interaction between the people that collaborate in an activity with different responsibilities takes place. Furthermore, the process flow chosen has a direct impact on process performance, as described in Lam, Ip, and Lau ( 2009 ).
• Design and development phase : This phase involved the design and development of two novel artefacts, namely, (i) the RAM BI metamodel, which extends RAMs with information required for process execution (cf. Section 5 ), and (ii) a template-based technique called RAM2BPMN for transforming such information into BPMN elements that can be interpreted by a BPMN process engine (cf. Section 6 ).
• Demonstration phase : This phase involved the development of a software prototype that effectively showed that it was possible to transform the information of RAM BI models into BPMN elements automatically using templates. Furthermore, it also showed that the solution is platform independent since it was used to generate process models that were executable in different BPMS (cf. Section 7.1 ).
• Evaluation phase : The proposal has been evaluated in two different directions. On the one hand, we have used our approach to model interaction patterns between the people that collaborate in an activity with different responsibilities to validate that our solution was flexible enough to accommodate those interactions (cf. Section 7.2 ). On the other hand, we have applied our approach to two real scenarios in order to show its applicability and the advantages gained by its use (cf. Section 7.3 ).

These phases were developed by means of several iterative cycles. In an initial cycle, we partially defined the problem, reviewed existing research literature and current solutions from industry, and developed an initial solution that included a first version of the RAM BI metamodel and a predefined interaction for RASCI responsibilities (Cabanillas, Resinas, and Ruiz-Cortés 2011b ). Then, subsequent cycles were necessary to refine the RAM BI metamodel, to make the approach independent of RASCI responsibilities and to give flexibility to the approach by means of the template-based technique.

5. RAM BI : resource assignment matrices with binding information

A typical RAM enables an assignment of resources based on the organisational entities placed at the columns of the matrix, which usually are organisational roles. This limits the expressiveness of the resource assignments in two directions. On the one hand, it is not possible to set additional constraints related to the person assigned to the activity, such as requiring specific capabilities or excluding performers of previous activities to enforce an SOD . For instance, in the example of Section 2 the PhD student that is responsible for the activity Send Authorisation is not any PhD student but the one that prepared the authorisation form. On the other hand, it limits the ability to put additional constraints on the organisational entities used as columns. For instance, in the same example, the role project coordinator should not refer to any project coordinator, but the coordinator of the project to which the authorisation that is being requested belongs.

In the remainder of this section, we first introduce the RAM BI metamodel, then we present its semantics and at last, we provide details of a specific instantiation of the metamodel with a specific resource assignment language.

5.1. RAM BI metamodel

RAM BI matrices (i.e., RAMs with binding information) is the extension we propose to overcome these limitations of the expressiveness of RAMs. It complements a RAMs with binding information that provides the specific conditions that the individuals have to fulfil in order to participate with a specific type of responsibility in an activity.

These conditions are expressed using a resource assignment language. From an abstract perspective, a resource assignment language ℒ is composed of a set of expressions that use the different entities that are part of an organisational metamodel, such as people, roles or positions, for selecting elements of an organisational model defined according to the organisational metamodel. In other words, it can be seen as a query language for the organisational model. Accordingly, the semantics of a resource assignment language ℒ can be defined by a function m a p ℒ that maps each expression in ℒ to a set of elements of the organisational model that is being queried.

For instance, a resource assignment language ℒ that queries an organisational model defined according to the organisational metamodel depicted in Figure 2 could have expressions that select people that play a certain role (e.g., selecting all people that have the role researcher ) or that have performed a previous activity in the process (e.g., selecting all people that have performed activity Prepare authorisation in the current instance), amongst others. Furthermore, a resource assignment language also can have expressions to select not only people but other elements of an organisationl model such as organisational units or roles. For instance, we can query the model to obtain all positions that belong to an organisational unit.

Excerpt of the organisational model described by Russell et al. ( 2004 ).

Using a resource assignment language, a RAM BI model can be formalised as follows.

Let 𝒯𝒟 be the responsibility types that can be used in a RAMs, and let ℒ be a resource assignment language where κ and χ are the set of expressions to select organisational entities and people, respectively. A RAM BI is a tuple M = (𝒜, 𝒪ℛ, ℬℛ,  o c ,  a r ) , where:

• 𝒜 = { a 1 , ...,  a n } is the set of activities that appear in the rows of the RAM BI , 𝒜 ≠ ∅ .
• 𝒪ℛ = { o r 1 , ...,  o r n } is the set of organisational roles that appear in the columns of the RAM BI , 𝒪ℛ ≠ ∅ .
• ℬℛ ⊆ 𝒜 × 𝒪ℛ × 𝒯𝒟 is the set of BoundRole s defined in M . A BoundRole ( a ,  o r ,  t d ) represents a type of responsibility t d assigned to a Role o r of the organisational model for a given Activity a of a process. In other words, BoundRoles represent the letters that appear in the cells of a RAM.
• o c :ℬℛ →  κ is a partial function that assigns an organisational context to a BoundRole .
• a r :ℬℛ →  χ is a partial function that assigns additional restrictions to a BoundRole .

In this definition, the binding information is provided by functions o c and a r , namely: (i) o c indicates additional restrictions that apply to the organisational entity used as column, such as the organisational unit to which the role must belong for a specific BoundRole ; and (ii) a r is used to specify restrictions on the people that can have a certain responsibility in an activity, e.g., to have knowledge on a specific subject or to have performed a previous activity in the process.

Table 4 defines a set of auxiliary functions that are used in the following sections to manipulate the RAM BI matrix M .

Auxiliary functions for the RAM BI metamodel.

5.2. Semantics of the RAM BI metamodel

Giving semantics to a RAM BI means to determine which are the people that can have a certain type of responsibility in a given activity according to the information included in a RAM BI model. To do so, we rely on a function m a p ℬℛ that determines the people that fulfill the conditions of a BoundedRole . Intuitively, this function can be defined as follows:

• If the BoundedRole b has no binding information (i.e., o c ( b ) and a r ( b ) are undefined), then the people that fulfill the condition of b are those people that play the role identified in the BoundedRole (e.g., any researcher).
• If the BoundedRole b has an organisational context defined (e.g., a reserch project), then the people that fulfill the condition of b are those people that play the role identified in the BoundedRole within the organisational context provided (e.g., any researcher in a specific research project.)
• If the BoundedRole b has an additional restriction defined (e.g., being responsible for activity Prepare authorisation), then the people that fulfill the condition of b are those people that play the role identified in the BoundedRole and fulfill the additional restrictions (e.g., researchers that are responsible for activity Prepare authorisation.)
• Finally, if the BoundedRole b has both an organisational context and an additional restriction defined, then the people that fulfill the condition of b are those that play the role identified in the BoundedRole within the organisational context provided and fulfill the additional restrictions.

This can be formalised as follows.

Let O be an organisational model with P people. Let ℒ be a resource expression language that can query model O whose semantics is defined by function m a p ℒ . Let O C be the set of all possible organisational contexts for a role o r  ∈ 𝒪ℛ in model O , and let p ( o r ,  o c ) ⊆  P be the set of people that have role o r in context o c according to O . The semantics of each BoundRole of a RAM BI M = (𝒜, 𝒪ℛ, ℬℛ,  o c ,  a r ) is defined by function m a p ℬℛ :ℬℛ → 𝒫( P ) as follows:

This function gives semantics to the resource assignment specified in each BoundRole (i.e., in each cell of the RAM BI ). However, this does not specify the semantics when there are several BoundRoles with the same responsibility for the same activity (i.e., the same responsibility appears in more than one cell in the same row), which is common for responsibilities like Consulted, Support or Informed. Since no formal semantics for RAMs have been defined, several different interpretations can be done in different contexts:

• Only one person can do the responsibility. This person must fulfil the conditions of the resource assignment specified in any of the bound roles defined for the same responsibility and the same activity.
• Only one person can do the responsibility but this person must fulfil the conditions of the resource assignment specified in all the bound roles defined for the same responsibility and the same activity.
• Several people can do the responsibility; one for each bound role defined for the same responsibility and the same activity. Each of these people must fulfil the conditions of the resource assignment specified for their respective bound role.

These interpretations can be formalised as follows.

Let M = (𝒜, 𝒪ℛ, ℬℛ,  o c ,  a r ) be a RAM BI model, and let 𝒯𝒟 be the type of responsibilities that can be used in M :

• The semantics of the first interpretation is defined as function o r M a p M :𝒜 × 𝒯𝒟 → 𝒫( P ) as follows: o r M a p M ( a ,  t d ) = ∪ b r ∈ f i l t e r M ( a , t d ) m a p ℬℛ ( b r )
• The semantics of the second interpretation is defined as function a n d M a p M :𝒜 × 𝒯𝒟 → 𝒫( P ) as follows: a n d M a p M ( a ,  t d ) = ∩ b r ∈ f i l t e r M ( a , t d ) m a p ℬℛ ( b r )
• The semantics of the third interpretation is defined as function m a p M :𝒜 × 𝒯𝒟 → 𝒫(𝒫( P )) as follows: m a p M ( a ,  t d ) = { m a p ℬℛ ( b r )| b r  ∈  f i l t e r M ( a ,  t d )}

The additional constraints included by binding information may cause undesirable side effects if there is no person in the organisational model that meets all the constraints. This could happen, for instance, if we set as additional constraint for the clerk that is responsible for activity Prepare authorisation in the running example that she has the capability of speaking English and it turns out that there is no clerk with such a capability in the project. The identification of these situations is called consistency checking and it has been studied in detail in the literature (Cabanillas et al. 2015b ). Specifically, a resource assignment, such as the one specified by a RAM BI model, is consistent if it is always possible to find a potential participant for an activity during any execution of the process for any responsibility type that appears in the resource assignment.

Since inconsistencies are caused by the constraints included by binding information specified in a resource assignment language, the ability to check the consistency of a RAM BI model is directly related to the ability to check the consistency of the resource assignment language used in its binding information. This is possible with some resource assignment languages such as RAL (Cabanillas et al. 2015b ). In the next section we introduce RAL and detail how consistency checking can be implemented with it.

5.3. Using RAM BI with RAL

As discussed in the previous sections, a RAM BI model relies on an external resource assignment language to define its binding information. Next, we illustrate how RAM BI can be used with RAL (Cabanillas et al. 2015b ). We have chosen RAL because of its high expressive power, capable of supporting all the creation patterns (Cabanillas, Resinas, and Ruiz-Cortés 2011 ) and because it has a well-defined semantics that enable the implementation of analysis operations such as consistency checking. However, other resource assignment languages could also be used.

RAL is a modular (DSL) that specifies a set of expressions and constraints to define resource assignment conditions independently of any specific process modelling notation. It is composed of five modules:

• RAL Core allows defining generic resource assignment expressions based on resource’s characteristics. For instance, it allows assigning an activity to one of two specific resources with the expression (IS Betty) OR (IS Anna) .
• The occupies relation is supported by PositionConstraint , e.g., HAS POSITION AssistantProfessor.
• The isMemberOf relation is supported by UnitConstraint , e.g., HAS UNIT InstituteForIB.
• The participatesIn relation is supported by RoleConstraint , e.g., HAS ROLE Researcher, or HAS ROLE Researcher IN UNIT InstituteForIB.
• The hasCapability relation is supported by CapabilityConstraint , e.g., HAS CAPABILITY PhDdegree.
• RAL Data and RAL DataOrg allow selecting individuals, positions, roles or organisational units indicated in a data field of a data object of a process, according to the BPMN (OMG 2011 ) specification of the business process data perspective. 12 For instance, the following expression specifies that the resource allowed to execute an activity is indicated in the data field Applicant of the data object Application : IS PERSON IN DATA FIELD Application.Applicant.
• RAL AC stands for RAL Access-Control and it extends RAL Core to enable the specification of access-control constraints, such as bod (e.g., IS ANY PERSON responsible for ACTIVITY SubmitPaper) and sod (e.g., NOT(IS ANY PERSON responsible for ACTIVITY FillForm)) .

The use of a specific resource assignment language in a RAM BI model has an impact concerning the type of binding information that can be used in it. Specifically, for RAL it involves the following aspects:

• RAL has two expressions to select people according to roles, namely: HAS ROLE r and HAS ROLE r IN UNIT u . Therefore, the organisational context that can be given in RAL to an organisational role is always the organisational unit in which the role is played (e.g., the role Coordinator can be played in a department or a project.) Consequently, expression κ refers to an organisational unit and p ( o r ,  c ) can be resolved using RAL expression HAS ROLE or in UNIT c.
• All previously described RAL resource assignment expressions can be used to add additional constraints to a BoundedRole . This means that all the creation patterns (Cabanillas, Resinas, and Ruiz-Cortés 2011 ) can be used to select people in RAM BI models. For instance, it is possible to add additional constraints related to the capabilities of the resource usingRAL Org expression HAS CAPABILITY capabilityID or based on the responsibilities it takes in other activities using aRAL AC expression such as IS ANY PERSON responsible for ACTIVITY a .

Figure 3 illustrates in a simplified way the use of the RAM BI metamodel with RAL using as example activity Register at Conference of the scenario described in Section 2 and Table 2 . As depicted in Figure 3(a ), the person with responsibility type Responsible is the researcher who prepared the authorisation request. Hence, there is a bod access-control constraint defined with RAL AC. As for responsibility type Consulted, it is assigned to the coordinator of the project that funds the trip to the conference, indicated in the data object Authorisation form . Therefore, the organisational context is defined with aRAL DataOrg expression.

RAM-BI models and RAL expressions for activity Prepare Authorisation.

Finally, the well-defined semantics of RAL enables the implementation of several analysis operations such as consistency checking (Cabanillas et al. 2015b ). Therefore, to check the consistency of a RAM BI model that uses RAL as its language for binding information, we just need to translate a RAM BI model into a RAL expressions and then leverage the consistency checking operation that has been implemented for RAL . This translation can be easily done using RAL expressions HAS ROLE or for the case when o c ( b ) and a r ( b ) are undefined, HAS ROLE or IN UNIT u for the case when o c ( b ) is defined and the operator AND to compose expressions for the case when a r ( b ) is defined. The result is function m a p B R R A L : B R → R A L E x p r that can be defined as follows:

Finally, o r M a p M R A L and a n d M a p M R A L , both can be straightforwardly defined by joining the RAL expressions obtained by m a p B R R A L for each bound role defined for the same task duty and the same activity with OR and AND, respectively.

6. RAM2BPMN : using RAM BI with BPMN models

RAM2BPMN is our approach to enable current BPMS to execute BPMN processes in which people with different responsibilities collaborate to complete process activities. An overview of RAM2BPMN is depicted in Figure 4 . The core idea is to take a BPMN model without resource-related information and a RAM BI model as inputs and to automatically generate a new BPMN model in which the only responsibility defined for each activity is Responsible, but which includes new activities to model the semantics conveyed by the other responsibilities included in the RAM BI model. More specifically, RAM2BPMN turns every activity for which some type of responsibility different than Responsible is defined into a subprocess. We refer to the subprocesses created during the transformation as RAM subprocesses . A RAMs subprocess is a regular BPMN subprocess that includes the specific tasks for all the responsibilities that people may have during the execution of the activity of the original process. RAMs subprocesses are created from collaboration templates . A collaboration template specifies how people with different responsibilities interact with each other to carry out an activity of a process. The collaboration template used is chosen at design-time amongst a library of templates depending on the specific requirements of the activity.

Overview of RAM2BPMN.

We have opted for this approach for several reasons. First, because it ensures that RAM2BPMN can generate models for any BPMS because the generated model only relies on defining the resource responsible for each activity, which is the only responsibility supported in BPMN by default. Second, because the additional complexity that results from including the information about different responsibilities is found only inside the RAMs subprocesses and hence, it does not affect the overall understandability of the initial process. Furthermore, the only difference between the resulting model and the initial one from the visualisation standpoint is that tasks are transformed into collapsed subprocesses.

Figure 5 depicts an example of template 13 that models the interaction of the RASCI responsibilities as it was introduced in Cabanillas, Resinas, and Ruiz-Cortés ( 2011b ). This interaction establishes that the approval action (Accountable) takes place after the completion of the work developed for the activity (Responsible), and only then the notification action (Informed) can be performed. There is also a loop to redo the work in case it does not get the approval by the resource with the responsibility Accountable. Actions of responsibility Consulted and responsibility Support are considered to take place in parallel with the task performed by the resource with responsibility Responsible. Finally, the template includes two decision activities performed by the resource with responsibility Responsible to decide whether support or consultation are required. The template also has some placeholders that have to be filled with information that comes from the RAM BI model and the definition of the activity in the BPMN model.

Example of a template that models the interaction of RASCI responsibilities as it was introduced in in Cabanillas, Resinas, and Ruiz-Cortés ( 2011b ).

Another relevant aspect is that not all possible RAM BI models can be used with the template depicted in Figure 5 . In particular, it requires that there is exactly one bound role for responsibility responsible and at most one bound role for responsibility accountable for each activity, whereas there can be any number of bound roles for the other responsibilities. In general, each template may require a specific cardinality for the responsibilities of a RAM BI model.

The procedure that creates a RAM subprocess from a template for a specific activity of the process is the instantiation of a template . This procedure uses the information of the RAM BI and the BPMN models to fill the placeholders of the template with activity-specific information and to compose the RAMs subprocess, when necessary. For instance, Figure 6 depicts the result of the instantiation of the template in Figure 5 .

Example of the instantiation of static template in Figure 5 for activity Register at Conference of the process defined in Figure 1 .

The advantage of using templates is that each organisation may define their own library of templates to specify how people involved in an activity of a process with different responsibilities interact with each other, thus providing flexibility on the way these interactions are carried out. Furthermore, although one template is usually used for all activities of a process or even several processes, it may be the case that for a specific activity (or process) one might be interested in using a different template. For instance, for a time-sensitive activity, one might be interested in a template in which the person accountable for the activity does not only supervise the outcome of the activity but also the completion time. This can be done, e.g., by designing a template in which the task performed by the person responsible for the activity has a timer that triggers a supervision task performed by the person accountable for the activity when a predefined time has passed. Section 7.2 discusses some examples of different templates that can be used with RASCI responsibilities.

The support for different templates for each activity in the process is modelled by means of function t e m p l that links each activity to the template that must be used:

(Assignment of templates to activities) Let A be the set of activities of a process and 𝒯 be the set of all possible templates, function t e m p l : A  → 𝒯 specifies which template is used for each activity of the process.

RAM2BPMN: Including resource assignment information from RAM BI into a BPMN model

1: IN : BPMN; M  = ( 𝒜; 𝒪 R ; ℬ R ;  o c ;  a r ); templ

2: Pre : 𝒜 ⊆ activities of process BPMN

3: Pre : The resource assignment of M is consistent with BPMN

4: Pre : compatible(M; templ)

5: OUT : BPMN’ model with resource information

6: BPMN ’ ← BPMN

7: for all activity a in the business process BPMN do

8:   if anyTD(a) then

9:    T ← templ(a)

10:    subprocess a ← instantiation of template T using BPMN and M

11:   replace in BPMN’ activity a by subprocess a

12:   end if

13: end fo r

14: return BPMN’

Based on the concept of template and its instantiation, the RAM2BPMN algorithm can be formalised as detailed in Algorithm 6. The input is a resource-unaware BPMN model, i.e., a model without resource assignments, ( b p m n ); a RAM BI model ( M ), and a t e m p l function.

The algorithm has three preconditions, namely: the activities of the RAM BI model must be a subset of the activities in the BPMN model (specifically, those that cannot be automated); the resource assignment of M must be consistent with bpmn (cf. Section 5.2 ), and the templates chosen by the t e m p l function must be compatible with the RAM BI model in terms of cardinality (cf. Section 6.1 ).

The algorithm can be outlined as follows. First, the b p m n model is cloned into b p m n ′ (line 6). Then, the following three steps are executed for each activity of the process (line 6) that has a resource assignment in the RAM BI model ( a n y T D ( a ) ) (line 6). First, the template associated to the activity is selected (line 6). Second, the template is instantiated using the resource assignment information provided by the RAM BI model (line 6). Finally, the activity of b p m n ′ is replaced by a subprocess created using the template instantiated in the previous step (line 6). The last step of the algorithm is to return the new b p m n ′ in which activities have been replaced by RAMs subprocesses (line 6.

Next, we delve into the two parts of the algorithm that require more details, namely: the concept of compatibility between RAM BI model and template (line 6), and the definition and instantiation of templates (line 6). The consistency checking has already been discussed in Section 5.2 .

6.1. Cardinality of templates

As discussed before, not all RAM BI models can be used with a specific template because templates may require a specific cardinality for the responsibilities of the RAM BI model (e.g., they may limit the number of people with responsibility Responsible to exactly one). The cardinality of a template is defined with the template together with the specification of the interaction it models, such as the one in Figure 5 , and can be formalised as follows.

(Cardinality of a template) Let T be a template and let 𝒯𝒟 be the set of responsibilities supported by T . The cardinality of each responsibility is defined by means of function c a r d T :𝒯𝒟 → IN 0  × (IN 0 ∪ { n } ) such that c a r d T ( t d ) = ( x ,  y ) means that the template requires at least x bound roles and at most y bound roles for a responsibility t  ∈ 𝒯𝒟 , such that x  ≤  y . If y =  n , then any number of bound roles greater than or equal to x is allowed.

For convenience, for each c a r d T ( t d ) = ( x ,  y ) we define functions m i n T ( t d ) =  x and m a x T ( t d ) =  y to represent the minimum and maximum number of bound roles for a responsibility t  ∈ 𝒯𝒟 .

Based on the cardinality of a template, the compatibility of a template and a RAM BI model for an activity can be defined. Intuitively, a template is compatible with a RAM BI model for an activity A if all responsibilities specified in the RAM BI model for A fulfil the cardinality restrictions specified in the template. This can be formalised as follows:

(Compatibility of a template) Let M = (𝒜, 𝒪ℛ, ℬℛ,  o c ,  a r ) be a RAM BI model , 𝒯𝒟 M be the set of responsibilities used in M , c a r d be the cardinality function of a template T , and 𝒯𝒟 T be the set of responsibilities used in T . The template T is compatible with the RAM BI model M for an activity a  ∈ 𝒜 iff the number of bound roles specified in M related to activity a for each responsibility is within the constraints specified by the cardinality function c a r d :

Finally, equipped with this definition, it is easy to define the compatibility of an assignment of templates to activities ( t e m p l ) with a RAM BI model as follows.

(Compatibility of an assignment of templates) Let M = (𝒜, 𝒪ℛ, ℬℛ,  o c ,  a r ) be a RAM BI model and t e m p l an assignment of templates to activities. The assignment of templates to activities t e m p l is compatible with M if and only if it assigns a template that is compatible with M for each activity in 𝒜 :

6.2. Definition and instantiation of templates

Figure 5 depicts an example of template for RASCI responsibilities. However, this shows just one possible way in which a template can be defined and instantiated. As a matter of fact, the only requirement imposed by the RAM2BPMN algorithm is that the result of the instantiation should be a subprocess configured using information from the BPMN and the RAM BI models. This means that different approaches can be used to define templates and their choice depends on the characteristics of the template that is being modelled as discussed in Section 6.2.3 .

In the remainder of this section, we detail two different approaches for the definition of collaboration templates and discuss their advantages and drawbacks, although other approaches could also be designed. To illustrate them, we use the aforementioned interaction of RASCI responsibilities introduced in Cabanillas, Resinas, and Ruiz-Cortés ( 2011b ).

6.2.1. Static templates

A static template is a process model defined in BPMN (cf. Figure 5 ) that details the interaction between people with different responsibilities within an activity with just two peculiarities:

• Placeholders are used in the resource assignments and the names of the activities that will be replaced with values obtained from the RAM BI and/or the BPMN models during instantiation.
• XOR gateways are included in the process for enabling or disabling the activities specific to a responsibility. To this end, placeholders can also be used in the conditions of the gateways.

The instantiation mechanism of these static templates just involves the replacement of all the placeholders that appear in the template. This is done by iterating over all these placeholders and replacing their value by one obtained from the RAM BI or the BPMN model. Table 5 depicts a list of the placeholders that can be used in the static template and their replacement.

Frequent placeholders and their replacement.

Figure 5 depicts an example of a static template and Figure 6 depicts its instantiation. The template models the interaction of RASCI responsibilities introduced in Cabanillas, Resinas, and Ruiz-Cortés ( 2011b ) and includes gateways to bypass parts of the process in case the responsibility is not assigned for the activity. The template also has placeholders for the name of the activities so that they include the name of the activity for which the RAM subprocess is created, and the resource assignments (expressed using BPMN annotations in the diagram). In particular, activities Provide support, Provide information and Approve activity are assigned to the responsibilities Support, Consulted and Accountable, respectively. The other activities, which include the two decision and the two assessment activities, are performed by the responsibility Responsible. In the latter case, the RAL expression

is used. This allows every element within the subprocess to make reference to the performer of the activity (i.e., the new subprocess), since according to BPMN (OMG 2011 ) the allocation related to a subprocess is made before starting the activities that compose it. Note also that the responsibility Informed is different from the others because it refers to the target of the notification action (i.e., the people that are informed), not to the holder of the responsibility like in the rest of cases. Furthermore, given the definition of the responsibility Informed (cf. Section 3.1.1 ), it is reasonable to consider it an external participant of the process because, independently of her responsibilities with respect to other process activities, for the activity in question she is a target and not an executor. For this reason, the activities that correspond to the responsibility Informed are modelled as send tasks (OMG 2011 ).

6.2.2. Fragment-based templates

Static templates provide a simple yet useful mechanism to define templates. However, more complex mechanisms can be devised. One source of inspiration for these mechanisms are configurable business processes (La Rosa et al. 2011 ). A configurable process model captures a family of related process models in a single artifact. Such models are intended to be configured to fit the requirements of specific organisations or projects, leading to individualised process models (van der Aalst et al. 2010 ). Therefore, templates can be seen as a type of configurable business processes and their instantiation can be seen as a configuration of them (Kumar and Yao 2012 ). Consequently, most approaches for defining and setting up configurable business processes can be adapted for defining collaboration templates.

In particular, fragment-based templates are based on the approach proposed in Kumar and Yao ( 2012 ) for designing flexible process variants using templates and rules. The templates are made up of two different elements that can change from template to template, namely: a set of process fragments, at least one for each responsibility; and a composition algorithm that is used for putting together all those fragments and for enabling or disabling the tasks specific to a responsibility.

Fragments must be subprocess graphs with single entry and single exit nodes (also denoted as hammocks in graph literature (Weber, Reichert, and Rinderle-Ma 2008 )) that represent the tasks that are necessary to carry out a given responsibility. Not only the same placeholders as with static templates but also ad-hoc placeholders can be used in the fragments. The value for these placeholders must be provided by the composition algorithm. Figure 7 depicts an example of fragments that belong to a fragment-based template (more examples can be found in Section 7.2 ). Specifically, five process fragments named R-fragment, A-fragment, S-fragment, C-fragment, and I-fragment are defined, one for each RASCI responsibility. Each of them have their corresponding placeholders in the names of the activities and the resource assignments.

Example of the fragments defined for each of the RASCI responsibilities in a fragment-based template.

Concerning the composition algorithm, the idea is to combine the accompanying process fragments in a meaningful way based on the information provided by the RAM BI model and the BPMN model. To describe how the process fragments are composed together, we suggest the use of change patterns (Weber, Reichert, and Rinderle-Ma 2008 ). Change patterns and in particular, a type of them called adaptation patterns, allow users to structurally modify a process model using change operations defined in terms of the process model (e.g., adding an activity in parallel to another one) instead of change primitives defined in terms of the underlying graph (e.g., adding a single node, two control flow edges, and the connectors between them) (Weber, Reichert, and Rinderle-Ma 2008 ). A consequence of this is that change operations provide a compact way of defining changes on a process because each change operation involves one or more change primitives (e.g., adding an activity in parallel involves up to seven change primitives). Furthermore, these changes tend to be easier to understand because they are defined in a higher-level way. All these reasons make change operations a suitable language to define these compositions. Table 6 shows a summary of the most frequent change operations.

Frequent change operations for the implementation of fragment-based templates.

Together with change operations, placeholders defined in Table 5 can also be used as variables and functions in the composition algorithm. The placeholders of the process fragments are replaced during the execution of the composition algorithm. This is done by means of function replace , which receives the fragment with placeholders and returns the same fragment with all placeholders replaced with their corresponding value. The values for ad-hoc placeholders must be provided as parameters of function replace .

Algorithm 2 shows an example of composition algorithm of a fragment-based template that composes the fragments defined in Figure 7 . This algorithm is executed as part of the instantiation of the fragment-based template it belongs to, which means that it would be invoked within line 10 of Algorithm 1. The algorithm starts by replacing the placeholders in the fragment for the responsibility Responsible (line 8). Then, if responsibility types support or consulted have been defined in the RAM BI model (lines 5 and 8) it inserts in parallel fragments for the responsibilities Support and Consulted (lines 6 and 9, respectively). Next, if responsibility type accountable has been defined in the RAM BI model (line 11), it inserts sequentially the fragment for the responsibility Accountable (line 12) and embeds the whole process in a loop based on the decision made by the person accountable for the activity, i.e., whether the work is approved or not (line 13). Finally, if responsibility type informed has been defined in the RAM BI model (line 15) it inserts a fragment for the responsibility Informed for each organisational role that must be informed. This is done in several steps. It iterates over all organisational roles with responsibility Informed defined in the RAM BI model for the given activity (line 17). For each of them, it obtains its resource assignment and name (lines 18 and 19) and it inserts in parallel fragments for each of them in a temporal variable i n f o r m F r a g m e n t (lines 20–23). Finally, it inserts sequentially all these parallel fragments contained in i n f o r m F r a g m e n t (line 26). Figure 8 depicts the instantiation obtained after executing the composition algorithm for activity Register at conference according to the RAM BI model depicted in Table 2 .

Example of the composition algorithm of a fragment-based template that support RASCI responsibilities

1: IN : 𝒯𝒟 = { R ;  A ;  S ;  C ;  I } are the RASCI responsibilities supported by this template.

2: IN : R – fragment; S – fragment;C – fragment;A – fragment; I – fragment are the fragments defined in Figure 7 .

3: OUT : composed fragment

4: base ← replace(R-fragment)

5: if hasTD(S) then

6:  base ← insertParallel(base, replace(S-fragment))

8: if hasTD(C) then

9:  base ← insertParallel(base, replace(C-fragment))

11: if hasTD(A) then

12:  base ← insertSequential(base, replace(A-fragment))

13:  base ← embedInLoop(base, not approved, approved)

15: if hasTD(I) then

16:  informFragment ← empty fragment

17:   for all br ∈ filter(I) do

18:    ra ← map M (br)

19:   name ← orM(br)

20:    if informFragment = empty fragment then

21:    informFragment ← replace(I-fragment, ra, name)

22:    else

23:    informFragment ← insertParallel(informFragment, replace(I-fragment, ra, name))

24:    end if

25:   end for

26:  base ← insertSequential(base, informFragment)

28: return base

Instantiation of the template depicted in Figure 2 for activity Register at Conference.

6.2.3. Discussion

The decision on which template mechanism to use depends on the requirements of the specific scenario in which they are being applied. Fragment-based templates enable reusing fragments in different templates. So, one can have a repository of different fragments for the same responsibility and combine them in different ways with different composition algorithms. In addition, fragment-based templates allow a more flexible definition since the composition algorithm provides a more fine-grained control of the results of the instantiation. For instance, in Figure 8 several inform fragments were added, one for each organisational role with the responsibility Informed in the RAM BI model, which is something that cannot be easily done with static templates. Finally, the subprocess obtained from fragment-based templates tends to be easier to understand since it only includes the responsibilities that have been assigned to the activity.

However, static templates are easier to build since they do not need a composition algorithm and hence, it is not necessary to deal with its implementation. Moreover, in fragment-based templates, it is harder to detect deadlocks or livelocks introduced during the instantiation because the composition algorithm may change the control flow depending on which responsibilities are enabled for the activity at hand. This does not happen in static templates, in which the control flow is the same all the time.

Therefore, the conclusion is that fragment-based templates should be used in cases in which we are interested in building templates that have many commonalities or in cases in which we require a more fine-grained control of the instantiation. Otherwise, static templates are more appealing since that approach avoids the complexity of developing the composition algorithm.

7. Validation

We have validated the feasibility of the approach with a reference implementation, its flexibility with a repository of templates for responsibility modelling on the basis of the RASCI responsibilities, and its applicability by using the approach with a real scenarion from the railway automation domain.

7.1. Implementation

We have developed a reference implementation of the RAM2BPMN algorithm as well as an editor for RAM BI models and a repository of templates. Furthermore, we have also implemented templates according to the modelling alternatives for the RASCI responsibilities described in Section 7.2 . An overview of the architecture designed to support the RAM2BPMN procedure is depicted in Figure 9 . A use case for the whole architecture is described as follows:

• A template designer builds a set of templates using a template editor and stores them in the template repository.
• A RAM BI model is defined for each BPMN model whose resource assignment we want to extend. To this end, a process designer uses the RAM BI Model Editor to define the RAM BI for the given BPMN model. Furthermore, she also chooses the template that should be applied to each activity from amongst the templates stored in the template repository.
• The RAM2BPMN engine uses the RAM BI model, the BPMN model and the templates from the template repository to obtain a BPMN with resource information.
• The BPMN model obtained in the previous step is deployed into a BPMS for its execution.

Overview of the architecture implement to support the RAM2BPMN procedure.

The templates used by the architecture can be either static templates or fragment-based templates. Furthermore, the architecture has been designed so that new types of templates could be easily added to the system.

All of the components that make up this architecture have been integrated into Collection of Resource-centrIc Supporting Tools And Languages (CRISTAL) (Cabanillas et al. 2012 ), a tool suite that provides support for the specification and automated analysis of the business process resource perspective. Information about the system can be found at

7.1.1. Templates editor

In our current implementation, there is no dedicated template editor. Instead, a BPMN model editor is used to model the static templates or the process fragments for the fragment-based templates and then, they are manually stored in the templates repository.

7.1.2. Templates repository

The templates repository is a Java library that stores the templates that have been designed for the organisation. Each template is composed of a template description file, which details the name of the template and its cardinality (cf. Section 6 ), and a set of companion files that are specific of each type of template. For instance, in a static template there is only one companion file, which is the BPMN model of the template; and in a fragment-based template there is one companion file for each process fragment and another one for describing the composition algorithm. The current implementation of the templates repository relies on a file-based storage for both template descriptions and companion files.

7.1.3. RAM BI model editor

It is a Web application developed in Java that allows the user to define the resource information associated with the activities of a BPMN model by filling in a RASCI matrix (Website 2014 ) and optionally adding binding information with RAL (Cabanillas et al. 2015b ), as shown in Figure 10 . This editor also allows the user to specify the template that should be used for each activity in the process, i.e., function t e m p l . Both the RAM BI model and the function t e m p l are serialised into the JSON file format.

Screenshot of the RAM BI Model Editor.

7.1.4. RAM2BPMN engine

The RAM2BPMN Engine implements the RAM2BPMN algorithm (cf. Algorithm 1). Specifically, it receives an XML file with the representation of a (resource-unaware) BPMN model, a JSON file with the RAM BI model and the function t e m p l , as well as a templates repository; and it returns the XML representation of the BPMN model with the RASCI information embedded in it. This functionality can be invoked from the user interface of the RAM BI Editor (cf. Figure 10 ) or from the command line.

The RAM2BPMN Engine supports the two types of templates described in Section 6 . Furthermore, the engine has been designed to allow new types of templates provided that the corresponding instantiation mechanism is integrated into the engine.

The resulting BPMN model generated is standard BPMN . Therefore, it can be manipulated in any process modelling tool and executed in a BPMN -compliant BPMS that has the required support for the resource assignment language used in the RAM BI model .

7.2. Modelling alternatives for RASCI responsibilities

One of the main advantages of our approach is that it does not enforce any specific behaviour for the people with different responsibilities that work together on an activity, but it allows the organisation to model the interaction that best suits its requirements. Furthermore, a library of templates can be created by the organisation so that they can be reused in different processes.

In the following we validate this flexibility by modelling alternatives that can be considered for RASCI responsibilities. We focus on RASCI responsibilities because they are a well-known responsibility set used in many different domains. The modelling alternatives are obtained from our experience in different projects in which RASCI responsibilities have been modelled as well as from patterns identified in both the industry (Effektif 2016 ; OASIS 2010 ) and the related research literature (Brambilla, Fraternali, and Vaca 2011 ; Barchetti et al. 2012 ). Because the requirements of each organisation may lead to different alternatives, this is by no means a complete catalogue, but rather an illustration of the wide variety of possibilities that our approach enables.

To avoid confusion, in this section we use activity to refer to the activity of the original business process for which a RAMs subprocess shall be created and we use task to refer to each of the activities that are part of the RAMs subprocess. The modelling alternatives are introduced using BPMN 2.0 modelling concepts (OMG 2011 ).

7.2.1. Responsible

This responsibility represents the execution of the activity itself and the coordination of other responsibilities involved in the execution of the activity such as Support, Consult or Informed. Therefore, the modelling alternatives for this responsibility come from the role it plays in the interaction with the other ones. Since these alternatives are also related to the other responsibilities, they are described in the section that discusses the respective modelling alternatives.

7.2.2. Accountable

The modelling alternatives of this responsibility are based on whether the accountability refers to the quality of the work performed or it also refers to the fact that the work is finished in a timely manner. The former is the typical interpretation of accountability whereas the latter is useful for time-sensitive activities.

If accountability refers to the quality of the work performed, it usually involves an explicit approval of the work previously performed by the person responsible for the activity. This implies adding a task for that purpose in the template. If the work is not approved, then a loop is in place so that the person responsible for the activity has to do it again. An example of this can be found in the task Approve Activity  <  activityName  >  of the template of Figure 5 . This behaviour has been identified as the Document Approval pattern in Effektif ( 2016 )

If accountability refers to making sure the work is finished in time, it involves the inclusion of a trigger in the process that notifies the person accountable for the activity that it has not been completed in a predefined amount of time. From a modelling perspective, this involves adding a time-based non-interrupting boundary event to the task performed by the person responsible for the activity such that if a certain time has passed and the task has not been completed, the person allocated to the responsibility Accountable is notified. This behaviour has been identified as the Timed Escalation pattern in Effektif ( 2016 ) and it is also the way accountability is dealt used in OASIS ( 2010 ).

Both alternatives are not exclusive and can be used together in the same template.

7.2.3. Support and consulted

The responsibilities Support and Consulted share some modelling alternatives because they have a very similar nature. Both of them involve a person to collaborate with the person responsible for the activity in its execution, being their degree of involvement in it the only difference between them. There is a wide variety of modelling alternatives for these two responsibilities based on several characteristics of the interaction, namely:

Template fragment that shows a modelling example for consult responsibility modelled as mandatory, done after some work, batches, group-based, system decided and not assessed.

• The moment in which support or consultation takes place . There are two options: it can be done in parallel to the main task, or it can be done after some initial work is done. From a modelling perspective, the former case can be modelled as in Figure 5 in which support and consultation tasks are performed in parallel with task Perform activity . The latter case usually involves three stages: a first stage in which the person responsible for the activity performs a preliminary task; a second stage in which support or consultation is required; and a third stage in which the person responsible for the activity merges the contributions received. This general scheme is followed by several patterns identified in the literature. For instance, in the Collaborative Editing pattern described in Barchetti et al. ( 2012 ), the person responsible for the activity first creates a draft and then this draft receives contributions from all the people with the Support responsibility for the activity. Finally, the person responsible for the activity collects all contributions and finishes the activity. The same pattern but for the Consulted responsibility is described in Effektif 2016 ) as the Multiple Stakeholder Input pattern. This is the pattern depicted in Figure 11 .

Template fragment that shows a modelling example for support responsibility modelled as optional, done in parallel, anytime, group-based, responsible decided and assessed.

• The number of people that can provide support or be consulted . In this case, the support or consultation can be asked to one person at a time or to a group of people at the same time. Modelling the former is straightforward and an example is depicted in Figure 5 . The latter can be modelled using either several parallel tasks or a multi-instance task. Using several parallel tasks is more appropriate if we want to control exactly how many people can provide support or consultation in parallel. It is also useful to have a higher degree of control concerning who decides who takes the responsibility (see next characteristic). Instead, if we are interested in providing freedom of choice at run time, multi-instance tasks are more convenient because all their parametrisation in terms of the number of parallel instances and conditions for cancellation are defined using run-time process data. Figures 11 and 12 depict this alternative.
• The decision on who performs the Support or Consulted responsibility . A RASCI matrix defines a set of candidates to provide support or consultation for a given activity. However, it does not mean that all of them have to provide it. Someone has to choose the specific people that shall be allocated to the responsibility. There are typically two options to do so: either the person responsible for the activity explicitly chooses the specific people from amongst all candidates, or the choice is done following the mechanisms provided by the BPMS. The former option requires having a task performed by the person responsible for the activity in which she chooses the people she wants for support or consultation. This choice is stored in a data object that is used to assign these people to the tasks that represent the support or consultation by means of RAL expression IS PERSON IN DATA FIELD x. An example is depicted in Figure 12 . This behaviour has been identified as the Required Role Assignment pattern in Effektif ( 2016 ). The latter option just requires using the RAL expression of the RASCI matrix assignment of the responsibility for the activity in the task that represents the responsibility. This is the way it is done in the template of Figures 5 and 11 .
• The explicit assessment of support or consultation . If support or consultation is explicitly assessed, then a task performed by the person responsible for the activity should be added after the task that represents the support or consultation. An example of this is depicted in Figures 5 and 12 by means of task Assess support for  <  activityName  >  .

In addition to the aforementioned characteristics, it is also possible to model the support tasks in a more structured manner. For instance, one may create a template in which the support follows a divide-and-conquer approach. In this case, the person responsible for the activity may decompose the work to be done in small work items and assign each of them to people that provide support to the activity. After all the contributions have finished, the person responsible for the activity can merge all the work items into a final result. This pattern is typically used in crowdsourcing scenarios (Kittur et al. 2011 ).

7.2.4. Informed

This responsibility is modelled as a task that notifies the people that have to be informed about the state of the activity. Its modelling alternatives are based on the following characteristics of the interaction and a version of them are also present in the support WS-HumanTask (OASIS 2010 ) provides to responsibility informed:

• The moment at which people are informed . The most typical behaviour is that people are notified at the end of the activity, i.e., after it has been performed and approved. This is how it is done in the example of Figure 5 . However, other moments for notification can be included in the template, such as when the work related to the activity has been performed and it is waiting for approval. One may also want to notify the state of the activity after a certain amount of time has passed. This can be modelled by attaching a notification task to a time-based non-interrupting boundary event placed in the task representing responsibility Responsible. Note that all these alternatives are not mutually exclusive and hence, they can be used altogether in the template.
• The person in charge of informing . The Informed responsibility is peculiar in the sense that the people assigned in the RASCI matrix are not the ones who perform the activity, but those who receive the notification. This means that someone has to perform the action of informing. One option is that the notification is sent automatically by the BPMS, e.g., as an email. If, on the contrary, the notification has to be sent by a person, that person might be either the person responsible for the activity or a person that provides support for the activity, since sending notifications can be seen as a supportive task.
• The way notifications are realised . The how is usually domain-specific and may cover a wide set of options that range from an email to a web service invocation or a telephone call, among others. Furthermore, how people are informed is strongly related to who performs the notification because some notification mechanisms are easier to automate than others. For instance, a notification that involves sending an email or an SMS is easier to automate than making a phone call.

7.3. Use case

We have applied our approch to a real scenario from industry in the railway automation domain, specifically to the process for releasing a new engineering system for a railway customer. The BPMN model of the process is depicted in Figure 13 .

An engineering process in the railway domain.

The process starts when a new agreement with a client has been signed by the project management team. A new repository is then created for the customer data by a technician and, at the same time, possible additional data are requested from the client by the engineer project manager. The next step is the actual engineering of the system, a subprocess in which the new system is built. It thus involves a large variety of resources and data coming from different data sources. The engineering project manager orchestrates and monitors the engineering tasks. Once the system is built, it must be tested before it is released for its use. That procedure takes place in a laboratory and comprises two steps: the test setup and the test execution. Prior to that, the testing project manager has to check whether the lab spaces needed must be set up for the test. Specific information about the lab settings and the system developed might be required in order to make such a decision. The employees of the organisation involved in the test setup and run steps are specialised in the execution of specific testing phases for specific types of systems, i.e., there may be an engineer who can perform the setup for a system S 1 and the test execution for a system S 2 , another engineer who cannot be involved in the testing of system S 1 but can perform both activities for the system S 2 , and so on. The setup tasks usually require one lab assistant working on one unit for a specific type of hardware in the laboratory; and the run activity usually requires several employees for its execution, in particular, one engineer who is responsible for conducting the tests and one lab assistant who provides support. When the testing of the system is finished, the testing project manager is notified, as they account for this activity. They then check the results of the test. If the results are not satisfactory, the system must be re-engineered. Otherwise, the testing project manager writes a final report that is archived together with the information generated containing the description of the test cases, test data, test results, and the outline of the findings. Information from the engineers involved in the building of the system may be necessary for writing such a report. Once ready, the engineer project manager is informed and proceeds to deploy an already complete and tested version of the engineering system, most likely helped by an engineer. The system integration team will later undertake the installation of the product, which constitutes a different process.

Table 7 shows the RASCI matrix of the process excluding the two subprocesses and Figure 14 illustrates a template that models the interaction of RASCI responsibilities for activity Run test . The template is done by composing template fragments for the responsibilities involved. Note that the alternatives described in Section 7.2 must be considered for this purpose. In particular, regarding support, it is optional for the activity and, in case it is required, it can be requested at any time and will be carried out in parallel with the rest of the execution performed by the person responsible for the activity, i.e., the engineer in charge. Only one lab assistant supports the engineer in running the test. Assessment by the engineer is not necessary as the work will later be checked for approval. In order for that to happen, the testing project manager is informed about the completion of the work and proceeds to check the outcome, hence following the Document Approval pattern.

RASCI matrix for the engineering system release process.

Composition of template fragments for activity Run Test.

8. Discussion

From the analysis of the research literature and the current approach followed in industry to responsibility management in business processes, it becomes apparent that there is an increasing demand and support for modelling activities that involve several people with different responsibilities. However, as far as process automation is concerned, the only responsibility that is managed during process execution in most proposals is the one related to carrying out the work required for the completion of the activity. Moreover, in the few cases that they support other types of responsibilities, this support is very limited in terms of generalisability and flexibility as discussed in Section 4 . This is a problem because the other responsibilities have to be implemented by manually adding activities for them in the executable process model, which is a time-consuming and error-prone task, specially for processes with a large number of activities or frequent changes in the resource assignment.

This paper introduces two novel artefacts, namely the RAM BI metamodel and the RAM2BPMN algorithm that contribute to improve the existing support for responsibility management in executable business processes in order to alleviate the aforementioned problem. Specifically, these two artefacts together enable the execution, in current BPMN engines, of business processes in which several people participate in the same activity with different responsibilities. This is done thanks to RAM2BPMN that automatically extends business process models to include in them the information about the people with different responsibilities that are specified in a RAM BI model. This extension is done leveraging templates that can be defined by the user and specify how the interaction between the people with different responsibilities must be carried out. Although the use of templates to transform BPMN models has been done elsewhere, this approach is the first time in which templates have been used to deal with the organisational perspective of business processes. Specifically, by using them, our approach fulfils the two goals defined in Section 4 , which are not supported by any of the proposals analysed in Section 3 , namely:

• It is generic in terms of the types of responsibilities that can be used in it because it does not impose a predefined set of responsibilities, but it can use the most convenient set for each situation.
• It is flexible in the sense that the interaction between the people that collaborate in an activity with different responsibilities is not predefined, but can be adapted to specific scenarios. Furthermore, our proposal enables the creation of libraries of templates that allows reusing different interaction patterns across activities, processes, and even organisations.

Furthermore, the way RAM2BPMN is designed provides the following additional advantages:

• It is platform independent in the sense that the models obtained can be used by any BPMS that supports BPMN .
• It is transparent in the sense that, although it transforms the original process model into a new one, the new elements are always embedded into subprocesses, which means that the original structure of the process model is unaltered. This is an advantage for the monitoring of the process and the understandability of audit logs because, although the information provided by the BPMS refers to the extended process instead of the original one, since the process structure is unaltered, it is straightforward to translate the information to the original process.

It is also remarkable that although we use BPMN as the process modelling language, the same ideas can be applied to other process modelling languages by adapting the details of the approaches described in this paper to their features. Similarly, where we use RAL one could use another language for defining resource assignments. In this case, the overall expressiveness would be that of the resource assignment language used.

However, our proposal has two main limitations. First, in the current approach, the template has to deal with the errors that occur during the process, e.g. a person that should be informed is not informed because the email server does not work. Although this is enough for most cases, it limits the ability to reuse error recovery strategies in different templates. One possible solution could be to extend RAM2BPMN so that the designer can specify which recovery strategy must be use in each activity independently of the template chosen. Second, since we are using RAL to define the resource assignments, mechanisms to process RAL expressions are necessary in order to be able to automatically calculate the potential holders of the responsibilities at run time; however, this support can be easily integrated into BPMS, as described in Cabanillas et al. ( 2015b ).

9. Conclusions and future work

In this paper we have presented an approach to extend the existing support for responsibility management in business processes. This approach is based on a metamodel and a technique to enable the execution, in current BPMN engines, of business processes in which several people participate in the same activity with different responsibilities. A prototype of the approach has been implemented, and it has been evaluated by modelling existing interaction patterns between people that collaborate in an activity with different responsibilities and by applying it to two real scenarios.

From this work we conclude that the existing support for responsibility management can be improved in several directions. On the one hand, our proposal of RAM BI models shows how modelling responsibility assignments can be decoupled from process models unlike what is usually done in languages such as BPMN that put together the information concerning control flow and human resources. This enables a separation of concerns between process behaviour and resource assignment, which provides a better visualisation of the information concerning resource assignment. This is especially useful when modelling complex processes or when the designs of the control flow and the resource assignments are done by different persons.

On the other hand, this work shows that it is possible to create a library templates that model different interactions patterns between people that participate in the same activity with different responsibilities. What is interesting is that these templates are reused across different activities and even different processes. This encourages a new research line focused on identifying these interaction patterns and determining in which situation they are useful. Some preliminary work already exists coming from industry (Effektif 2016 ) and academy (Brambilla, Fraternali, and Vaca 2011 ; Barchetti et al. 2012 ).

As next steps, we plan to explore additional use cases together with industry. In particular, we are interested in coming up with a set of interaction patterns that can be found in different cases and to define them using a similar approach to the design patterns in software engineering (Gamma et al. 1993 ). In addition, we also plan to extend our prototype implementation to integrate it into an open source BPMS such as Camunda. 14 Specifically the idea is to integrate the implementation as a plugin so that a model is transformed right after being deployed in the BPMS in a way that is transparent to the user. We think that this would contribute to the dissemination of the tool and its integration by startups or third party companies.

Funding Statement

This work was supported by the Austrian Science Fund [V 569-N31]; Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) [845638]; European Union’s H2020 Programme [645751]; Spanish R&D&I Programme [TIN2015–70560]; Andalusian R&D&I Programme [P12–TIC-1867].

1. Please notice that the values for roles and persons are fictitious.

2. In BPMN a process takes place within a single pool. Diagrams with two or more pools, in which messages between the pools are exchanged, are called collaborations.

3. http://www.sixsigmaonline.org/six-sigma-training-certification-information/articles/the-efficient-use-of-a-six-sigma-raci-matrix.html .

4. http://en.it-processmaps.com/products/itil-raci-matrix.html .

5. For the sake of simplicity, the organisational roles that are not involved have been omitted.

6. http://www.visual-paradigm.com/tutorials/racichart.jsp .

7. http://academic.signavio.com/help/en/responsibility_assignment_acco.htm .

8. http://www.bizagi.com/ .

9. http://www.jboss.org/products/bpmsuite/overview/ .

10. https://camunda.com/ .

11. http://www.bonitasoft.com/ .

12. A Business Process can have a set of Data Objects , which can contain one or more Data Fields , whose value may change throughout process execution.

13. From now on, when we use the term template , we refer to collaboration templates .

14. http://camunda.org .

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Time Management Matrix: How to Use It and Examples

What is the Time Management Matrix?

The time management matrix, also known as the Eisenhower matrix , is a productivity tool designed to help individuals categorize and prioritize their tasks based on urgency and importance. Renowned for its simplicity and effectiveness, this matrix enables users to identify the tasks they should focus on first, ensuring critical activities are not neglected.

The primary purpose of the time management matrix is to enhance productivity by systematically categorizing tasks. It aims to reduce stress, improve efficiency, and facilitate better decision-making when managing multiple responsibilities. By using the matrix, individuals can visually map out their tasks, ensuring that essential activities are given the attention they require, while less critical ones are managed appropriately.

The time management matrix divides tasks into four distinct quadrants:

Quadrant I: Urgent and Important - Tasks that require immediate attention, such as crises or pressing deadlines.

Quadrant II: Not Urgent but Important - Activities focused on long-term goals, planning, and personal growth.

Quadrant III: Urgent but Not Important - Distractions and interruptions that need to be minimized, like unnecessary meetings.

Quadrant IV: Not Urgent and Not Important - Time-wasting activities that should be minimized or eliminated, such as excessive social media use.

By categorizing tasks into these quadrants, users can effectively prioritize their workload, focusing on tasks that contribute meaningfully to their goals and minimizing distractions. In conjunction with modern tools like Creately, which supports visual project management and task tracking, implementing time management becomes even more efficient. For further reading, check out our article on the Eisenhower matrix .

• Ready to use
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Origin of the Time Management Matrix

The time management matrix stems from a long history of prioritization strategies developed to boost productivity. Its foundation lies in the Eisenhower Matrix, conceptualized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. This method was designed to aid in managing tasks more effectively by categorizing them based on urgency and importance.

Stephen Covey brought widespread attention to the time management matrix through his best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People . Covey adapted Eisenhower’s original idea into a more comprehensive framework. His version further emphasizes long-term goal-oriented activities in Quadrant II, recognizing the importance of proactive planning and improvement. This distinction helps individuals dedicate sufficient time to not just urgent tasks, but crucial ones that foster growth and success over time.

What are the Four Quadrants of the Time Management Matrix?

The time management matrix categorizes tasks into four distinct quadrants based on their urgency and importance. This framework helps individuals and teams prioritize their tasks effectively, fostering increased productivity and reduced stress. Here’s a breakdown of the four quadrants:

Quadrant I: Urgent And Important

This quadrant focuses on tasks that require immediate attention and have significant consequences if not completed. These tasks include crises, impending deadlines, and emergencies. Managing Quadrant I effectively ensures critical issues are addressed promptly, preventing escalation into more significant problems.

Quadrant II: Not Urgent But Important

Quadrant II emphasizes tasks that are vital for long-term success but do not require immediate action. Activities such as strategic planning, personal growth, and relationship maintenance fall into this category. Spending more time in Quadrant II can lead to proactive management, reducing the occurrences of crises.

Quadrant III: Urgent But Not Important

Tasks in this quadrant demand immediate attention but are not crucial to achieving major objectives. These activities, often distractions, include non-essential emails, phone calls, and meetings. To maintain productivity, it’s essential to delegate or limit time spent on Quadrant III tasks. Utilizing distraction blockers can play a pivotal role here.

Quadrant IV: Not Urgent And Not Important

Quadrant IV is reserved for tasks that neither contribute to your goals nor require immediate action. These tasks are generally time-wasters, such as excessive use of social media or binge-watching TV shows. Minimizing or eliminating these activities can vastly improve productivity and focus.

By mastering the use of the four quadrants, you can better prioritize your tasks, ensuring that your time is spent on activities that matter most.

Who Should Use a Time Management Matrix?

The short answer is, anyone. If you want to figure out how to allocate your time effectively to complete your daily tasks, you can use a time management matrix. Anyone who has to juggle mutliple tasks while working on different projects can benefit largely from a time management matrix, as it helps you to organize tasks according to priority and help you deliver on time.

Why is Time Management Important?

The modern workplace has a lot of distractions. A study conducted in the UK revealed that an average employee is only productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes out of the working day. In this context, time management is more important because it helps employees to focus on what needs to be done in an effective manner.

By strategically allocating time to critical tasks, professionals can enhance productivity, reduce stress, and achieve their goals more efficiently. Mastering time management allows for better focus, improved decision-making, and increased job satisfaction. Ultimately, it empowers individuals to take control of their workload, leading to a more balanced and fulfilling career.

Benefits of Using the Time Management Matrix

Increase in productivity.

The time management matrix significantly boosts productivity by highlighting tasks that truly matter. By focusing resources on Quadrants I and II—urgent and important, and important but not urgent, respectively—professionals can tackle critical tasks promptly and proactively plan for long-term goals without the distraction of less important activities. This method ensures that energies are directed where they will have the most impact.

Improved Task Prioritization

Effective prioritization is a core advantage of using the time management matrix. It enables users to categorize their tasks intuitively, easily separating essential activities from those that can be delegated or postponed. This clarity fosters better decision-making, ensuring that the most vital tasks are attended to first, which can be particularly beneficial for product managers like Riley overseeing complex projects.

Stress Reduction

By methodically addressing critical tasks in Quads I and II, the time management matrix reduces the occurrence of last-minute emergencies and distractions. This systematic approach can lead to a substantial decrease in stress levels, as users are not constantly firefighting or feeling overwhelmed by unmanageable to-do lists.

Efficient Tracking

The matrix also enhances the tracking and visualization of progress, a feature that is amplified with visual workspaces like Creately. With its collaborative planning and real-time execution capabilities, Creately allows teams to see exactly where they stand on various projects. Tools like project visualization and task management can ensure that everyone is on the same page, further bolstering productivity and ensuring timely completions.

How to Draw a Time Management Matrix

Implementing the time management matrix can streamline your workflow and enhance productivity. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you start using this powerful tool effectively.

Identify All Tasks

Begin by listing all tasks and responsibilities you need to manage. Use a comprehensive approach to ensure you don’t overlook any critical activities.

Once you have identified all tasks, classify them into the four quadrants of the matrix:

Quadrant I: Urgent and Important - Tasks that need immediate attention, such as crises or pressing deadlines.

Quadrant II: Not Urgent but Important - Long-term planning, relationship building, and personal growth activities.

Quadrant III: Urgent but Not Important - Interruptions, meetings, and tasks that can be delegated.

Quadrant IV: Not Urgent and Not Important - Time-wasting activities like excessive social media use.

Prioritize Tasks

After categorizing, prioritize tasks within each quadrant. Focus on completing Quadrant I tasks first to avoid negative consequences. Aim to spend more time in Quadrant II for strategic planning and growth.

Create A Schedule

Develop a schedule to manage your tasks efficiently. Allocate specific time blocks for Quadrant II activities to ensure you stay proactive and prevent crises from arising. Platforms like Creately offer real-time task tracking to help visualize workflows and maintain a balanced schedule.

Be Flexible for Any Changes

While having a schedule is crucial, flexibility is equally important. Stay adaptable to accommodate unexpected tasks or changes. Reviewing your schedule regularly helps in making necessary adjustments.

Incorporate Distraction Blockers

Minimize time spent on tasks in Quadrant III and IV by using distraction blockers. Tools integrated into platforms like Creately can help eliminate non-essential interruptions, keeping you focused on more important tasks.

Tips to Use the Time Management Matrix

Mastering the time management matrix can revolutionize your productivity and task prioritization. Here are some invaluable tips:

Identifying Priorities

Your first step is to determine what tasks align most closely with your goals. Ask yourself which tasks hold significant consequences if left unattended. This practice will help you continually focus on your most critical work.

Learning to Categorize Tasks Quickly

Speed is essential. Develop the habit of instant classification by questioning the urgency and importance of each task. Using the matrix regularly will sharpen this skill, enabling quicker decision-making.

Scheduling Time for Uninterrupted Work

Allocate dedicated blocks of time for Quadrant II activities—important but not urgent tasks. This can help you reduce future crises and emergencies.

Automating, Delegating, and Outsourcing Tasks

Consider tools and strategies to automate, delegate, or outsource Quadrant III and IV tasks. This can free up precious time for more critical activities.

Using Distraction Blockers

Implementing distraction blockers can significantly enhance focus. Use software to block non-productive websites and apps during work hours.

Deploying these tips effectively can make the time management matrix an indispensable part of your productivity arsenal, boosting your ability to manage tasks efficiently across different projects.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Using a Time Management Matrix

Overloading quadrants: It’s easy to pile too many tasks into the urgent and important quadrant. Regularly reassess and redistribute tasks to prevent burnout.

Neglecting quadrant 2: This quadrant often holds long-term planning and improvement activities. Ensure you dedicate sufficient time to it for sustainable productivity.

Inaccurate task categorization: Misplacing tasks in the wrong quadrant can lead to inefficient time allocation. Regularly review and adjust as needed.

Failing to adapt: The matrix is a tool, not a rigid structure. Be flexible and modify it to fit your changing priorities and workload.

Ignoring time estimates: Underestimating task duration can lead to schedule overloads. Accurately estimate time requirements to maintain control.

Practical Examples of the Time Management Matrix in Action

Professional use case examples.

Consider a product manager, Riley, who oversees the development and launch of new products. Using the time management matrix, Riley can categorize her tasks effectively:

By allocating tasks to these quadrants, Riley ensures that urgent and important tasks receive the highest priority, while simultaneously making time for long-term planning and minimizing distractions.

Personal Use Case Examples

On a personal level, let’s take the example of a student using the time management matrix to handle academic and extracurricular responsibilities:

By using the time management matrix, the student can focus more on important tasks and less on time-wasting activities, leading to better academic performance and personal growth.

The time management matrix is an effective tool to prioritize what is important and enhance productivity. By categorizing tasks into four distinct quadrants based on urgency and importance, users can focus on what truly matters, plan proactively, and minimize distractions. Implementing this matrix involves steps such as identifying all tasks, categorizing them, setting priorities, creating flexible schedules, and using distraction blockers.

Using the time management matrix can transform how you handle your daily tasks, allowing for better organization, clearer goal-setting, and more efficient use of your time. Tools like Creately’s visual workspace not only support the matrix by enabling collaborative planning and execution but also offer features like task management and real-time tracking, making it easier to stay on top of your priorities. Don’t let stress and disorganization hold you back. Embrace the time management matrix to streamline your work processes and improve your overall productivity and well-being.

Join over thousands of organizations that use Creately to brainstorm, plan, analyze, and execute their projects successfully.

FAQs About the Time Management Matrix

Who popularized the time management matrix, how are tasks categorized in the time management matrix, what are some practical tips for implementing the time management matrix, why should i use the time management matrix, how does a tool like creately fit into using the time management matrix, more related articles.

Hansani has a background in journalism and marketing communications. She loves reading and writing about tech innovations. She enjoys writing poetry, travelling and photography.