While the majority of your day-to-day work may be within a single team, you’ll often need to collaborate with other teams. This can lead to confusion about processes and who is responsible for managing the work, doing the work, or communicating. When in doubt, you should always default to our core values & operating principles but sometimes you might need some additional clarity. In those situations, ask your manager and they’ll help you work through the question.
With larger projects, it can be helpful to use a tool like the RACI matrix to clarify roles & responsibilities even further. RACI stands for responsible, accountable, consulted, informed. Each letter represents a role:
As an example, this concept was used to clarify which teams are involved in managing integrations for Jilt.
In most cases it won’t be useful to actually document a chart; instead, use RACI as a mental framework when you’re feeling like parts of a project are missed or work is being duplicated. It’s helpful to sit down with your teammates working on the project and talk about those responsibilities and areas.