Define Project Roles for Clarity

Most teams reach for RACI when roles get fuzzy. At anything beyond a small project, it stops working.

A RACI grid with hundreds of cells. Nobody fills it in properly. Nobody maintains it. Nobody opens it after week two. The tool that was supposed to create clarity creates more noise.

This toolkit replaces RACI with three simple tables that answer the questions that actually matter:

• Who are the people, and what layer do they sit at?
• Who decides what?
• Who is in each workstream, and are they actually committed?

You can fill them in for any project in under an hour, and they're easy to maintain because they don't change often. When they do change, it's because something real has shifted.

What you get

• Excel template with three tabs: Start Here, a fully-worked Example, and a blank "Your Project" tab ready to fill in
• 6-page PDF guide explaining the methodology, walking through a real example, and showing how to use the template step by step
• Worked example based on a platform migration program with five workstreams and 45 people

Who this is for

• Program managers running multi-team programs
• Project managers on anything bigger than a small two-pizza team
• PMO leads who need a baseline for role clarity across projects
• Anyone who has tried RACI and found it doesn't survive contact with reality

What's it like to use

Open the Example tab. Skim through the three tables. See how they fit together. Then move to the Your Project tab and fill it in for whatever you're running. Walk your team through it once. Then update only when something real changes: a new starter, a leaver, a decision rights tweak.

This isn't a document you maintain weekly. It's an operating reference your team can come back to all the way through delivery.

About Structured Way

Project Roles for Clarity is part of the Structured Way toolkit family. We help anyone run their work like a good project, through downloadable toolkits, books, and journals. Built by program manager, for program managers.

Visit structuredway.com to explore the rest.