The Responsibility Matrix (Circle Dot Chart)

The Responsibility Matrix (Circle Dot Chart)
Years ago I sat in a presentation by the best Project Manager I have ever met. I had worked with several people that ran multi-million dollar projects in the US Air Force and had delivered on-time, on-budget projects, but they all seemed to do so with great difficulty and I was resigned to this being “just the way it goes”, then I met Mr. Ron LeFleur. Ron made Project Management look easy, even though he had several horrendously difficult projects in his life. We had the distinct pleasure of sitting with Ron for three days and learning his secrets. At the end of his presentation he told us we had all his secrets and every one of us can now do the job just as well as he ever did. I still think he was special and gifted, but his little session helped me more than all the training and experience I had up to that point. I had even sat through extensive PM training in the Air Force which was the equivalent to PMP training that is available today.

Just as an aside, Hal Lilywhite’s blog entry is one of the typical stories that Ron told to make his presentations entertaining and something we could all relate to, click here to read.

Ron taught us that there are three things to worry about with project management and they come in different priorities depending on where you are in the project and they are:

• Budget
• Schedule
• Performance

I liked how he explained that our main job is to keep those three in view at all time and we will be successful. That has served me well. One of the tools that Ron left us with is the Circle Dot chart. It is a simple Responsibility Matrix of all the tasks in the project and the intersecting people responsible for carrying these tasks out. The person who “owned” the task or where the buck stopped was the “Circle Dot”. This simple chart is the very basis of getting people motivated to get their responsibilities taken care of, there is nothing like a little peer pressure to help get the job done!

Download my version of this handy tool from our website, Click Here