Defining Process Roles and Responsibilities

Defining process roles and responsibilities prevents gaps, duplicated decisions and conflict between functional management and end-to-end accountability. A process becomes useful when people adopt it and leaders govern it; documentation supports that, but cannot substitute for ownership or behaviour.

• List the decisions and activities the process requires before assigning anyone to them, rather than using job titles as roles.
• Assign accountable and responsible roles, with a single accountable owner rather than several.
• Consult the affected teams and test the model with realistic scenarios. In the article's example, a scenario workshop reveals that everyone believed another team owned communication during a major incident. Make the results visible to everyone who depends on them.
• Measure role clarity, unowned activities and decision delay, agreeing a baseline and the management decision each should trigger. Review trends with providers and consumers, because a stronger headline is not enough if quality, risk or consumer effort deteriorates elsewhere.
• Avoid using job titles as roles, assigning several accountable owners and building a RACI no one uses. Pilot on one representative case, review role clarity, and extend only when the approach is credible.