SOP: RACI vs DACI — picking your ownership model

SOP: RACI vs DACI — picking your ownership model

Run this whenever a project stalls because "everyone thought someone else owned it."

Stage 1 — Diagnose the failure (owner: project lead)
☐ Is the blocker unclear approval, or unclear who decides?
☐ How many approvers does each step really need?

Stage 2 — Choose the model
☐ RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed): use when work spans many roles and you need to limit who's looped in. Best for handoff-heavy delivery.
☐ DACI (Driver, Approver, Contributors, Informed): use when the problem is slow decisions. The single Driver chases closure; the single Approver signs.

Stage 3 — Enforce the rule (owner: lead)
☐ Exactly one Accountable / Approver per item. Two means none.
☐ Publish the chart where the work lives, not in a buried doc.

Tradeoff: RACI maps execution roles; DACI accelerates decisions. Don't run both on the same artifact — pick the one matching your bottleneck.

Trigger: stalled ownership. Done-when: model chosen, one name per accountable slot.

Save this. Run it every time.