Project Responsibility Matrix

 

 

To reflect the hierarchy of accountability in the project and to indicate the responsibilities of each of the groups that make up the project team, it is recommended to include a responsibility matrix in the project content description document, the most common variant of which is known as the RACI matrix.

 The use of this tool is especially important in a situation where the project team consists of representatives of various legal entities (for example, a typical team on a CIS implementation project includes employees of the customer, the general contractor and subcontractors). The responsibility matrix solves the problem of demonstrating inter-organizational or inter-group interaction and, as a result, avoids misunderstandings that arise from time to time in projects between units and organizations due to uncertainty about who should be contacted on certain issues and who should decide on them, and who should directly implement the adopted resolution.

It is important to demarcate all formal powers,rights and obligations as early as possible, while the project team has not yet begun active work. Otherwise, when employees have their own idea of their place in the project, differences of opinion on these issues can escalate into protracted conflicts and have a significant negative impact on the project schedule.

Building a liability matrix

List the main works of the project.

Vertically, the matrix reflects only the main work of the project (not lower than level 2-3 of the IMR),but with a sufficient degree of detail to allow you to specify the different roles necessary to perform these works. When it comes to large projects and programs, it may be necessary to develop multiple liability matrices with varying degrees of detail.

List groups/roles within the project team.

Horizontally, the matrix lists the groups/roles within the project team. Note that the responsibility matrix is the group/role, not the names of individual team members. Personal fixation of design work is carried out later, at the stage of development of the project schedule.

Encode the responsibility matrix.

Use the codes in the cells at the intersection of the corresponding columns with the roles and rows with the project work to specify the degree of participation, formal authority and distribution of responsibility for each operation. Clearly specifying different levels of formal authority is especially useful in a situation where many members of the project team wish to make special requirements for the project.

Initiate the use of the matrix and include the procedure for using the responsibility matrix in the"Project Management Plan"document.

Once the liability matrix is approved, all further changes to it must go through an integrated change management procedure with the participation of the original authors.

The advantage of using a structured approach to changing the responsibility matrix is that the project manager receives an up-to-date document that he can refer to when there are certain disputes regarding the distribution of powers in the project.

In particular, the responsibility matrix can be used to allocate core functional responsibilities. Thus, in Table 6.2, the left column lists the functional responsibilities corresponding to the project work, the list of which is based on the methodology used and the accumulated project experience, and in the right part of the table a note is made about the degree of responsibility and participation of each of the members of the project management team in the performance of the corresponding function.