Assigning clearly defined roles and responsibilities are critical to the success of every process. These roles need to be defined early and reviewed periodically to ensure proper training, communication and education.  A process without clearly defined roles will fail at some level.   There is a very clear distinction in the activities or the roles that are played out by individuals in your organization.  You should determine and communicate who is accountable and who is responsible for the process activities.  A role is like a hat.  One individual could wear two or more hats.  Watch out for titles.  You might have a title such as Service Transition Manager.  What role(s) would this individual fulfill? It all depends on WHO is best suited for the role or task that needs to be performed when it comes to assigning roles. The Service Transition Manager could be accountable or OWN the “Release and Deployment” process but might also be ...

I was recently asked,  "From an ITIL standpoint, what’s the difference between Accountability and Responsibility?"   That's a g reat Question! There is a big difference between Accountability and Responsibility.  The ITIL Continual Service Improvement (CSI) book provides the following definitions: Accountable: Ownership of a process, and/or activity. The person who is held accountable and ensures that the goals and objectives of a process are being followed. Responsible: Performer of a task. The person responsible for getting the task/activity done. This person gets the work done and does not necessarily have the authority to ensure that others are getting their tasks completed. Accountable roles oversee or "own" the process or task; responsible roles execute or perform one or more aspects of the process or task. For example: A CIO is accountable for the quality of all IT services, including the results produced by ...

Not too long ago, I was involved in a post implementation meeting for a change that was not very successful. During the meeting there was a very heated discussion, some of the comments I heard were:  ‘I thought you were going to do that’ ‘That is not my responsibility” ‘Why wasn’t I informed that this was occurring’ 'I have the responsibility, but not the authority to get the job done' ‘I knew how to fix the issue, but no one ever asked me’   It occurred to me that having a RACI chart would address these comments. The RACI model is a straight forward tool used for identifying activities and relating them to roles and responsibilities, thus avoiding confusion over who does what and how people are involved. The acronym RACI stands for:  Responsible : This role is responsible for the correct execution of process and activities. This person or persons do the work to achieve the task. Accountable : This role has ownership of the quality and the e...