Use case

Who does what. RACI on a whiteboard, captured in seconds.

BoardSnap is an iOS app that reads a RACI matrix whiteboard — tasks, roles, and responsibility assignments — and produces a structured accountability document in one snap.

Download on the App Store Free to start. Pro from $9.99/mo or $69.99/yr.

The problem

RACI matrices exist because cross-functional work fails when accountability is assumed rather than assigned. Responsible (does the work), Accountable (owns the outcome), Consulted (provides input), Informed (kept in the loop) — clarifying these four roles for every major task or decision eliminates the 'I thought you were handling that' conversations that derail projects.

Building a RACI on a whiteboard is fast because you can draw the grid, fill in the R/A/C/I assignments collaboratively, and negotiate disagreements in real time. A PM who thinks they're Responsible for a decision and an engineer who also thinks they're Responsible will surface that conflict in the RACI session — where it's a five-minute conversation instead of a two-week project delay.

The problem is documentation. A RACI matrix is only valuable if people reference it during the project. A photo of a whiteboard grid isn't referenced. A clean document in the team's wiki is. Producing that document from the whiteboard takes 30 minutes of careful transcription — and it usually gets done imperfectly, missing some cells or getting R and A swapped.

The workflow

  1. Draw the RACI grid

    Tasks or activities as rows on the left. Roles or team members as column headers across the top. You need at least three to four rows and four to six columns to make the exercise worthwhile. Write 'Task / Activity' in the top-left cell as the header for the row labels. Leave the cells empty for now.

  2. List the tasks

    Write the tasks or decisions as row labels. Keep tasks specific: 'Write the PRD' not 'Product work.' 'Approve the design' not 'Design decisions.' One task per row. Eight to fifteen tasks is the productive range — fewer doesn't reveal accountability gaps; more than twenty becomes tedious.

  3. List the roles

    Write roles, not names where possible. 'PM,' 'Engineering Lead,' 'Design,' 'Legal,' 'CEO' are more durable than individual names. If this RACI is for a specific project with named people, use names. Write roles across the top — one column per role.

  4. Assign R/A/C/I in each cell

    Go task by task. For each task, assign: R to who does the work, A to who owns the outcome (only one person can be Accountable per task), C to who needs to be consulted, I to who needs to be informed. Leave a cell blank if a role has no assignment for that task. An A with no R means someone is accountable but nobody's doing the work — flag those immediately.

  5. Check for accountability gaps

    Every task must have exactly one A. Tasks with zero As have no owner. Tasks with multiple As have unclear ownership. Circle any row without exactly one A — these are accountability gaps that need to be resolved in the session.

  6. Check for overloaded roles

    If one role has R in every row, they're a bottleneck. Look at the column for that role — a long list of Rs with no delegation is a capacity problem hiding in the RACI. Mark it.

  7. Snap the board

    Open BoardSnap. The RACI grid has task labels on the left, role headers across the top, and R/A/C/I letters in each cell. Empty cells are fine. Circled cells are accountability gaps. BoardSnap AI reads the grid structure and the cell values.

What you get

A structured RACI document: each task listed with its full role assignment (who is R, A, C, I). Accountability gaps (tasks with missing or multiple As) are flagged as issues. Roles with overloaded responsibility columns are noted. The output is paste-ready into a project charter, a team wiki page, or a kickoff document.

Real examples

Product launch, cross-functional accountability

Seven teams, 14 launch tasks. The RACI session revealed two tasks with no Accountable person — nobody thought they owned the launch email sequence or the support team training. Both were assigned before the session ended. BoardSnap produced the complete RACI doc. The PM sent it as the kickoff email attachment.

Ongoing process RACI for a recurring workflow

An operations team built a RACI for their monthly customer reporting process. Eight tasks, five roles. The RACI revealed that the analyst was both Responsible and Accountable for every task — a single point of failure. The team redistributed accountability to the operations manager for sign-off tasks. BoardSnap's output became the process documentation.

Frequently asked

What's the difference between Responsible and Accountable in RACI?

Responsible = does the work. Accountable = owns the outcome, is the one person who answers if it's not done. A task can have multiple Rs (shared execution) but only one A (single ownership). The most common RACI mistake is assigning multiple As — it diffuses ownership and recreates exactly the problem RACI is meant to solve.

Can BoardSnap read a RACI with more than four assignment types — e.g., RASCI or DACI?

Yes. If you label your cells with D (Driver), A (Approver), C (Contributor), I (Informed) for a DACI format, BoardSnap reads whatever letters are in the cells. The output will use the same labels you wrote.

We have 20+ tasks and 10 roles — is the grid too complex for one whiteboard?

It's possible but dense. A 4x8 whiteboard can hold a 20x10 RACI if you write small and use letter abbreviations (R, A, C, I — one character per cell). For very large RACIs, split by workflow phase and snap each section separately.

Run your next raci matrix with BoardSnap.

Snap the board, ship the action items in ten seconds.

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