The Grapes of Wrath and Kafka: Value of RACI

The Grapes of Wrath¹ by John Steinbeck was set during the Great Depression in America. The book was made into an academy award winning film in 1940 directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad.

Early on in the book we hear of one of the farmers, Muley Graves, recite how he was served papers by a city man to get off his farm land. Muley tries to find out who is responsible for what he sees as this injustice. The city man tells him it is the Shawnee Land & Cattle Company but they are told what to do by the bank. Muley asks where the bank is. The city man says that the bank is in Tulsa but it is no good going there. The bank manager is only taking orders from the east. There appears to be no single person accountable for this action of evicting a man and his family from their farm.

Wikipedia² notes that Franz Kafka is regarded by critics as one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. His book, The Castle, is often understood to be about alienation, bureaucracy, the seemingly endless frustrations of man's attempts to stand against the system, and the futile and hopeless pursuit of an unobtainable goal.

At the start of our project we need to define accountability and responsibility, and not find ourselves in Muley Graves’ situation. Furthermore projects need to have obtainable goals and a system, unlike the situation faced by the protagonist ‘K’ in Kafka’s the Castle.

The APM Body of Knowledge 6th Edition³ provides professional guidance which assists in resolving these issues. We take the organisational breakdown structure. It is combined with a work breakdown structure to produce a responsibility assignment matrix.

This is known as an RACI Chart.

Where:

R is Responsible for action
A is Accountable yes / no decisions
C is for Consulted before (2 way)
I is for Informed (1 way)

At initiation we agree the RACI. During delivery we use this RACI to ensure ownership and there is a system in place. What are our options instead of RACI? When you start your next project, remember The Grapes of Wrath and Muley Graves, also that of Kafka’s K in the Castle. Our project requires responsibility, accountability and a way of ensuring that there can be feedback. The RACI Matrix is a way of agreeing this.

References

Steinbeck, John, The Grapes of Wrath, Penguin Classics, 2000, Print
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka
The APMBody of Knowledge, 6^th Edition, Association for Project Management, 2012