The DACI Decision-Making Framework was developed by software company Intuit in the 1980s. The DACI Decision-Making Framework assigns and then displays the responsibilities of the individual when making decision. DACI stands for driver, approver, contributor, and informed.
Understanding the DACI Decision-Making Framework
It is a group decision-making technique assigning roles and responsibilities to team members.
This includes identifying those who:
Must be consulted for further information.
Must be tasked with conducting research, interviews, surveys, or polls.
Must be informed once a decision has been made.
Make, approve, or disapprove decisions.
Follow or decide on recommendations.
By clearly delineating roles and responsibilities, the DACI framework encourages collaboration and reduces friction. Ultimately, this increases the speed of project management, allowing teams to make informed and timely decisions crucial to success.
The four roles of the DACI Decision-Making Framework
DACI is an acronym of four different group member roles that aid in simplifying decision-making.
Following is a look at each:
D – Driver
This is the individual who moves the decision making process forward. They ensure that decisions are made without necessarily making the decision themself on each occasion.
Drivers are tasked with setting decision timelines and ensuring that team activities run on schedule. They must also liaise with subject matter experts to make well-informed decisions.
A – Approver
The approver has the final say on a project aspect. Many companies may have more than one approver, but they should be kept to a minimum to fully realize the DACI benefits of speed and simplicity.
C – Contributor
A contributor is a person who influences decision making through specific knowledge or expertise. As a result, they act as consultants to drivers who then determine how that knowledge or expertise can be utilised.
I – Informed
Informed individuals have no authority over decision making, nor are they directly involved in the project itself.
Nevertheless, their own work may be indirectly affected as the project progresses. For a team working on a new product, an informed group may encompass customer service, sales, and marketing. While these groups have no say on the final product, they should be regularly updated so that resource allocation and planning can progress accordingly.
Implementing the DACI Decision-Making Framework
Teams that want to implement the DACI model should:
Determine the decision to be made. Here, the emphasis is on breaking the project down into smaller tasks and assigning a Driver to each. There should also be agreement on each action item and its associated outcomes.
Define DACI roles. Then, assign roles such as Approver or Contributor to each member of the team using a spreadsheet. Ensure that every individual understands their role well. It’s also important to note that one individual can hold several roles if required.
Define the workflow. At this point, the Driver begins developing the action plan. These plans should be broad and answer important questions. For example, who should attend meetings and how often will meetings occur once the project has begun? Will tasks be tracked by using a project management app, spreadsheet, or roadmap software? What will be the nature or structure of the decision-making process? In other words, will the Approver and Contributor have more say in decision making? Or will the project team as a whole collaborate directly with the Driver?
Key takeaways:
The DACI Decision-Making Framework clarifies roles and responsibilities for each member of a product development team to make better decisions.
The DACI Decision-Making Framework is based on four key roles that comprise the DACI acronym: Drivers, Approvers, Contributors, and Informed.
The DACI Decision-Making Framework is effective when projects are broken into smaller parts, with roles assigned to each. Before the project can begin, all members must understand and then agree upon their roles and responsibilities.
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The DACI Decision-Making Framework was developed by software company Intuit in the 1980s. The DACI Decision-Making Framework assigns and then displays the responsibilities of the individual when making decision. DACI stands for driver, approver, contributor, and informed.
The Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ) is a means of making fast decisions that provide quick direction. The Lightning Decision Jam was developed by design agency AJ&Smart in response to the inefficiency of business meetings. Borrowing ideas from the core principles of design sprints, AJ&Smart created the Lightning Decision Jam.
The multi-criteria analysis provides a systematic approach for ranking adaptation options against multiple decision criteria. These criteria are weighted to reflect their importance relative to other criteria. A multi-criteria analysis (MCA) is a decision-making framework suited to solving problems with many alternative courses of action.
The Cynefin Framework gives context to decision making and problem-solving by providing context and guiding an appropriate response. The five domains of the Cynefin Framework comprise obvious, complicated, complex, chaotic domains and disorder if a domain has not been determined at all.
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The SWOT analysis is commonly used as a strategic planning tool in business. However, it is also well suited for personal use in addressing a specific goal or problem. A personal SWOT analysis helps individuals identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
The Pareto Analysis is a statistical analysis used in business decision making that identifies a certain number of input factors that have the greatest impact on income. It is based on the similarly named Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect of something can be attributed to just 20% of the drivers.
A failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a structured approach to identifying design failures in a product or process. Developed in the 1950s, the failure mode and effects analysis is one the earliest methodologies of its kind. It enables organizations to anticipate a range of potential failures during the design stage.
A Blindspot Analysis is a means of unearthing incorrect or outdated assumptions that can harm decision making in an organization. The term “blindspot analysis” was first coined by American economist Michael Porter. Porter argued that in business, outdated ideas or strategies had the potential to stifle modern ideas and prevent them from succeeding. Furthermore, decisions a business thought were made with care caused projects to fail because major factors had not been duly considered.
A comparable company analysis is a process that enables the identification of similar organizations to be used as a comparison to understand the business and financial performance of the target company. To find comparables you can look at two key profiles: the business and financial profile. From the comparable company analysis it is possible to understand the competitive landscape of the target organization.
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Focus on what they are doing right.
Determine which skills could be enhanced.
Understand the desires and motivations of their stakeholders.
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Occam’s Razor states that one should not increase (beyond reason) the number of entities required to explain anything. All things being equal, the simplest solution is often the best one. The principle is attributed to 14th-century English theologian William of Ockham.
Occam’s broom was first proposed by South African microbiologist Sidney Brenner who proposed that inconvenient facts that do not fit into someone’s hypothesis or serve their agenda are swept aside or hidden. Occam’s broom is a principle stating that inconvenient facts are hidden or obscured to draw important conclusions or argue points.
Outcome bias describes a tendency to evaluate a decision based on its outcome and not on the process by which the decision was reached. In other words, the quality of a decision is only determined once the outcome is known. Outcome bias occurs when a decision is based on the outcome of previous events without regard for how those events developed.
The theory behind the principle-agent problem was developed by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Jensen and economist and management professor William H. Meckling. The principle-agent problem describes a conflict in priorities between a person or group and the representative authorized to make decisions on their behalf.
The TDODAR decision model helps an individual make good decisions in emergencies or any scenario with a high degree of uncertainty. TDODAR is an acronym of the six sequential steps that every practitioner must follow, comprising: time, diagnosis, options, decide, act/assign, review.
The Mendelow stakeholder matrix is a framework used to analyze stakeholder attitudes and expectations and their potential impact on business decisions.
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In general, terms, go/no-go decision making is a process of passing or failing a proposition. Each proposition is assessed according to criteria that determine whether a project advances to the next stage. The outcome of the go/no-go decision making is to assess whether to go or not to go with a project, or perhaps proceed with caveats.
The OODA loop was popularized by U.S. Air Force fighter pilot Colonel John Boyd to describe maneuver warfare during the Korean War. The OODA loop is a four-step approach to decision making where strategies must be adjusted quickly. Those four steps comprise observe, orient, decide, and act.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
