Rapid VS Raci: Everything You Should Know

rapid vs raci

A RACI chart can be an extremely effective way to define project roles, give direction to each team member and stakeholder, and ensure work gets done efficiently. RACI and RAPID are very dissimilar. It focuses on assigning decision-making responsibilities between different roles, unlike RACI which is purely task-driven. Continue reading, you will learn more about Rapid and Raci.

What Are the Differences Between RAPID VS. RACI?

For organizations and project managers with various functions, RAPID and RACI are two crucial tools. RAPID is primarily concerned with how an organization makes decisions and acts. In each phase of the process, RACI puts an emphasis on the deliverables and the person in charge. An organization might use the RAPID framework to make a decision, then a RACI matrix to carry out that decision by assigning duties. The organization makes sure that there is accountability and order in all of its teams and departments by utilizing both frameworks. The key differences between these two tools include:

  • RAPID assists businesses in identifying their decision-making process.
  • Organizations can develop an action plan using RACI for particular tasks.
  • RAPID is strategic planning and enterprise-wide design.
  • Throughout an organization, RACI concentrates on minor choices.

What is RAPID?

RAPID is a framework that aids in directing and enhancing an organization’s decision-making. Organizations can increase their productivity and efficiency by strengthening their decision-making procedures. The letters in RAPID stand for the individuals or positions involved in an organization’s decision-making. These roles are:

Decide is the primary role in this framework, with the other roles acting as its supports. Even though they are listed here, the roles don’t always take place in the order listed. Recommend, Input, Agree, Decide, and Perform is the most typical order, but RAPID is still the name of the framework. Here’s what each role involves:

Recommend

An approach is suggested by the person in this position. Here is where the RAPID framework frequently starts, with someone proposing an action the organization should take. This recommendation usually has research to back it up. For instance, they might propose that the business introduce a brand-new item.

Perform

These individuals carry out the decision. They make decisions about the best way to carry out the action and assign themselves tasks. To prevent the variables that influenced the decision-making process from changing, the performers want to take action as soon as possible after making a decision.

Agree

Before a recommendation can be implemented, the majority of organizations demand the approval of specific individuals. The person or people playing the Agree role have the option of rejecting the suggestion. The Agree role frequently bargains with the Recommend role to make changes before they can approve the recommendation. Keep the Agree role to a minimum in order to hasten decision-making.

Input

The Input role players offer arguments in favor of or against the advised course of action. They conduct research to find out the risks involved or how long it takes to implement the recommendation. When decision-making speed is a top concern, the Recommend role may omit the Input role.

rapid vs raci

Decide

The recommendation is presented to a decision-maker after being thoroughly examined. Typically, only one person holds the Decide role and has the authority to decide whether the recommendation is followed by the organization. If the Decide role acts on the suggestion, they immediately assign tasks to the Perform role members.

What Are the Pros and Cons of the RAPID Decision-making Model

To determine whether RAPID meets your needs, you must be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of any program or framework. Let’s now discuss RAPID’s advantages and disadvantages.

Pros

  • Excellent for deliberating a difficult or significant decision.
  • People’s buy-in and comprehension of the decision-making process are increased through the exercise of being assigned to RAPID roles.
  • The activity slows down hasty or compartmentalized decision-making. Too frequently, a crucial decision is hastily made out of a sense of necessity. Ironically, rushing a decision is the quickest path to a subpar outcome.
  • The framework is all-inclusive and guarantees that the appropriate individuals will be involved at the appropriate time and given the appropriate authority.

Cons

  • For simpler choices, it’s overkill.
  • It may expose organizational dysfunction or cause severe culture shock.

What is RACI?

The key stakeholders in a process are visually represented by the RACI matrix. According to the RACI system, each letter denotes a level of responsibility and how the person will participate in future decisions regarding that process. A list of a process’s steps is located on the matrix’s left side. A list of the roles played in the process is located at the top. The creator of the RACI matrix inserts a letter (R, A, C, or I) at each process step and positions the intersection to create the matrix.

The letters in RACI stand for:

  • Responsible
  • Accountable
  • Consulted
  • Informed

The level of accountability for the task is different for each role. The action-taker plays the role of the responsible party. The Accountable role holder is in charge of determining whether the process is successful or not. Process changes are under this person’s control.

The role-holder who is Consulted participates in the process and offers feedback. The role of Informed receives updates on process-related actions.

What Are the Variations of RACI?

Raci-vs

RACI-VS provides two additional indicators, i.e. Sign-Off (S) and Verification (V). There is a chance that any completion information for any task will be missed in core RACI. To overcome any possible deficiencies in any task, RACI-VS allows marking those roles as “V” which will scrutinize the quality and correctness of a given specific task. And to supervise both “V” and “R” | “A” roles, there will be a role “S”-Whoever signs off on the work will be the one to declare it complete.

Racio (or Cairo)

RACIO offers an extra participation type “O” which often means “Omitted” or “Out of the Loop”. Simply mentioning the roles that are not included in the purview of a particular task is permitted. This clarifies the engaged and unengaged resources in a task or project.

Rasci

“S” which stands for “Support” is a participation type that is similar to “Consult” in terms of the kind of involvement e.g. providing knowledge and resources to a task/project, but differs in the involvement duration and end goals. “Support” roles seek the completion of the task and remain actively involved throughout the task/project timeline. The roles of consulting, however, do not have any such objectives.

Other Variations

  • DRASCI: it is just like RASCI but has a “D-Driver” who centrally delegates the responsibilities.
  • DACI: it replaces “D-Driver” with “R-Responsible” in RACI.
  • RATSI: it’s a further derivation of RASCI which highlights the actual “T-Task” performers which can further help in detailed Resource evaluation
rapid vs raci

How Do Organizations Use RACI?

Below is an example of how an organization might use a RACI matrix to complete a project:

Godwin Industries wants to finish more building projects. They determine the steps in this process include:

  • Define functional needs
  • Assess risk
  • Create design
  • Execute construction

The Project Manager, Architect, Contractor, and Client are all participants in this process. The project manager sets up a RACI matrix, with the roles listed horizontally across the top and the tasks listed on the left side, to visualize responsibility levels. They assign each task and role combination a level of responsibility as they go along.

How to Make a RACI Chart?

The concerned role creates a table and arranges all the roles vertically and the tasks horizontally. In order to complete the matrix, the team then determines the RACI values for each cell. Ideally, there should be one and only one “A” against one task, one or more but not all “Rs” and a good number of “Cs” and “Is” to ensure communication.

How to Choose RACI Or RAPID?

You should not base your choice on which consulting or auditing firm you will use because they will pressure you to use one over the other. the other based purely on their internal corporate approach standard. If you aren’t sure which methodology to adopt, the best thing to do is to create a pros-cons chart based on your challenges/goals and corporate structure to evaluate which one will suit your needs best. The matrices cannot be classified as either good or bad. The effectiveness of each depends completely upon the relevance of the matrix with respect to the nature of the project, tasks, and the work body’s hierarchy. The next best step is to take it on a test run with some real-world tasks, processes, and projects before adopting one or the other approach enterprise-wide. The evaluation phase will show each method’s weaknesses clearly.

Another important heuristic to understand the applicability is to calculate the overall costs of adoption of a certain matrix and compare it to your process models to see if it is affordable in terms of time and money and can do more good than bad. RACI is usually less costly and more beneficial because usually, the task rarely is so large and complex that it would require a whole decision-making structure. RAPID, then, has the potential to significantly impair agility and decision-making if used excessively. Additionally, small to medium-sized businesses seldom make significant changes to the hierarchy because they are primarily focused on getting tasks done. RAPID works better only when a certain level of experience and expertise is required to take its full advantage. Otherwise, it might become a hassle and incur high overhead costs.

Is There Something Better Than RACI?

To avoid these pitfalls, we recommend an alternative to RACI called DARE—standing for deciders, advisors, recommenders, and execution stakeholders. Contrary to common sense, including more people in the decision-making process can be beneficial—but only if roles are clearly defined.

Conclusion

One of the biggest difficulties in project management is figuring out who will play which roles as decision-makers and who will be in charge of carrying out tasks to ensure the success of the project.