For decades, IT practitioners have made use of RACI charts. You’ve seen them, those grids that assign roles to tasks or practices. COBIT has had RACI charts in several versions and continues to make use of them in COBIT 2019.
ISACA is now including an Excel-based RACI matrix in the COBIT 2019 tool kit to help practitioners identify and customize the areas of responsibility and accountability for enterprise roles critical to a well-designed governance system.
COBIT 5 provided RACI guidance at the process level. COBIT 2019 has brought this to a level of guidance for each practice. The RACI matrices provided in COBIT 2019 present an initial view of what an enterprise could define as its practice assignments. In addition, the RACI charts now focus on providing flexible guidance on which role in the organization is “Responsible” or “Accountable” for each practice. Once these key assignments are determined, practitioners can further determine remaining role assignments for “Consulted” and “Informed” based on the unique requirements of their enterprise.
The value of this tool is that it provides a convenient means of speeding up the process of assessing and assigning relevant roles to practices across the 40 COBIT objectives. COBIT promotes using a common language and common understanding among practitioners. Common terminology facilitates communication and mitigates opportunities for error. Using RACI charts is central to that aim.
COBIT 2019 provides a generic model that decreases development time for the practitioner and provides a forum on which practice assignment discussions can be based. This increased efficiency is applicable to project managers, governance specialists and risk practitioners alike.