RACI vs. DACI 2: Deciding on Accountability

By Tom Swanson, Senior Engagement Manager at Heinz Marketing

Recently, I had another opportunity to engage with DACI as a tool.  In my previous post on this topic, my central point was that while RACI is best for discrete projects, DACI functions well for ongoing ownership of processes.  While I still believe this to be the case at large, this project gave me some food for thought.

Specifically: the key to selecting a model should be based on how you structure accountability, and what implications that has to a successful workflow.  As an aside, if you are looking to develop workflows, check out these posts: Business Cartography, Business Cartography 2

The team was committed to using DACI.  This commitment meant that my team had to work through how to structure DACI to support discrete projects.  We ran into some challenges with this in a few key areas:

1. Accountability
   1. Should it be with the driver, who makes sure the project moves forward, or should it be the approver who has final say?
2. Role shifting
   1. When the work of a project changes hands (say from planning to execution), does the driver change?
3. Collaboration and siloes
   1. For efforts that require cross-functional collaboration, how does a driver ensure things are prioritized and getting done?
4. Standardized outputs
   1. Are the outputs of the workflow standardized, or will there be significant output variation from effort to effort?

To not bury the lead too far: DACI proved useful for this team in managing these discrete projects.  However, there were characteristics of the team that impacted this.  When evaluating models, there are lots of internal and org cultural things to consider.

Here is what we learned in a nice and easy numbered list.

1. The driver does not change.

A core premise of the DACI model is the driver.  This is the person who makes sure that the project or process continues moving forward.  They get the people together and make happen what needs to happen.  During the project, a big question that came up was should the driver change depending on the step in the workflow?

The answer is no.  It is crucial that the driver be consistent throughout.  If you are going to be shifting the person in this role from step to step, then use RACI.  This is because if you are going to assign a driver, that person needs to have the full picture and context of the effort.  Anything less will cause drag as context naturally degrades in hand-offs.

2. The driver is accountable.

In RACI, it is easy to move accountability around depending on the step.  If the project is in a creative development stage, then whoever manages that team or project is accountable to seeing it move forward.  When projects are broken cleanly into steps, this is easy as the accountability for each step is discrete.  However, this falls short because sometimes ownership of the overall project gets lost.

However, with DACI, accountability should always sit with the driver.  The driver is ideally the person accountable to the results of the effort, and thus should hold that capital A.  At the end of the day, someone needs to hold the wheel (har har).

The trick with this is that sometimes accountability is going to sit with someone who doesn’t have direct control over the team working on a particular step.  This means they might be limited in their power to push their effort forward.  Leaders should be thinking about how to maintain flexibility for the driver here.

That being said, it does encourage the driver to be actively collaborating with team leads to ensure things are getting done.

If your organization has strong collaboration, DACI can be great.  But for siloed teams, you will run into challenges here.

3. DACI demands a solid collaboration culture.

Organizations, particularly large ones, struggle to promote collaboration.  Teams tend to operate in siloes.  Division of labor is natural.  However, if you are going to use DACI, you need a strong culture of collaboration.  This is a tricky area for many companies.

In a RACI-structure it is easier to have a siloed team manage their process internally and do their work since accountability can be assigned to that team leader for that step.  This isn’t to say that collaboration doesn’t happen, but more that there are defined areas where each team gives their input, and then hands-off to the next.

In DACI, the accountable party is consistent across steps (assuming you keep the driver consistent).  This means they have to drive collaboration from other teams.  If you don’t have a good culture for this, then they will repeatedly run into walls and delays as teams have other priorities.

This requires some internal honesty, because everyone wants to say their team is super collaborative.  But are you?  Really?

4. DACI is best when there is variability in outputs.

RACI works great when the outputs are standardized.  If accountability is going to shift from step to step, it is key that the expectations of the outputs are always the same.

However, marketing doesn’t often work that way.  If your team puts out work that looks different from project to project, having a single individual who holds the whole picture and all the context is beneficial.  Accountability sticks with this person, so they must maintain that vision throughout the project.  As mentioned before, context degrades with every hand-off, so when the context is unique to the project then it should really be held by a single driver.

Conclusion

There are plenty of things to consider in RACI vs. DACI, but if you are looking into expanding your process then you are likely talking a lot about accountability.  This is the most important consideration when selecting your model.

Don’t just think about how you want accountability to work, the bigger (and better) question is: how does accountability best serve your projects?  Accountability is a tool for leaders to both empower their people and to ensure that things are getting done.  Think about how you want to use it and decide your structure based on that.

And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out!

The post RACI vs. DACI 2: Deciding on Accountability appeared first on Heinz Marketing.