Since "planning a significant personal event like a move or trip" was a recommended type of project for this assignment, I chose to create a chart for my upcoming move. I currently live with one roommate and we will be going our separate ways, completing the bulk of the move on August 3rd.
- Gaps: I am exclusively responsible+accountable for many tasks in this project. I found very little discussion of how to notate this in a RACI chart - most guides seem to assume that every task would have at least one responsible party distinct from the accountable party. In the first draft, I marked myself as "A+R". In the second draft, I changed these to "A" only. I'm not sure which is preferable.
- Overlaps: I think I was pretty sparing in assigning responsibilities - I don't think the tasks with multiple roles marked "R" are confusing.
- Balance: In my opinion, I have too much to do, but it's my move, so it can't be helped.
- Consultation: It's arguable that some of the C's in the "Moving Day" section could be changed to I's. In practice, there isn't a sharp distinction between the two; it's a pretty informal thing. I changed a few to I in the second draft.
- Information Flow: Some parts of this move are essentially a solo project, so there is very little information flow in those sections.
Other notes:
- I tried including my cosigner and landlords, as they are C's or I's for a couple tasks, but I decided this made the chart harder to parse for no real benefit.
- "Clean old apartment" was removed - our lease specifies a non-refundable cleaning fee. "Repair holes in walls" was added, as I made quite a few of those.
Since I had already created an Atlassian account, I figured I might as well create the RACI chart within Confluence. These are the steps I followed:
- I created a new page, added Add title and text section listing roles and people with each role.
- I clicked "New table," and created a table with 5 columns.
- I mashed the Ctrl+Alt+↓ hotkey as needed to add rows for all tasks.
- After filling out the names of roles and tasks, I assigned R/A/C/I letters as appropriate.
- I arranged tasks into phases, then added a new row above each phase. In each of those rows, I merged all cells, added a background color, and identified the phase. Confluence's default color scale worked out well for this.
- This project isn't associated with a formal charter, but it might be useful to include this chart in our "Move-out Coordination" document to ensure my roommate and I are on the same page about what needs to be done and who's doing it. While I probably won't be sharing the chart with my helpers directly, I will be communicating substantially the same information on moving day or a few days prior.
- In a more formal project, it's useful to include a RACI chart in the project charter to clarify which roles are responsible for which tasks, and who they need to keep in the loop. The RACI chart would also be useful in the project kickoff meeting as a quick, visual means of communicating exactly what each team member will be doing. The kickoff meeting is also a great opportunity to revise the chart based on team feedback.