Most problems in a co-managed partnership come from the same root cause: nobody wrote down who owns what. The partner assumed the internal team was handling the firewall firmware. The internal team assumed the partner was. Six months later, nobody has updated it.
A RACI chart fixes that. It is a simple table that lists tasks and says, for each one, who does what. It takes an afternoon to build and saves a great deal of confusion.
RACI stands for four roles:
Responsible: the person or team who does the work.
Accountable: the one person or team who owns the outcome and signs off. There should be exactly one per task.
Consulted: people whose input is needed before or during the work.
Informed: people who need to know when the work is done or when something changes.
In a co-managed setup, the columns are usually your internal IT team, the partner and sometimes a business stakeholder, such as the CFO or a department head.
You do not need hundreds of rows. Group work into categories, then list the tasks that matter. A typical starting list:
Helpdesk: Tier 1 tickets, Tier 2 escalations, VIP support, new-hire and departure setups
Endpoints: patching, antivirus or EDR, software deployment, hardware replacement
Servers and cloud: monitoring, patching, backups, restore testing
Network: firewall management, switch and wireless configuration, internet circuit issues
Security: alert monitoring, incident response, user awareness training, access reviews
Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace: user management, licensing, security settings
Vendors: line-of-business software support, telecom, printers
Projects: planning, execution, sign-off
Documentation: who writes it, who reviews it
Compliance: audit evidence, policy updates, risk assessments
Build the chart in a working session with both teams. Go row by row. For each task, ask:
Who actually does this today?
Who should do it going forward?
Who owns the outcome?
Who needs to be told?
Expect disagreements. That is the point. It is better to find them in a meeting than in the middle of an outage.
In a true co-managed model, your internal team should be Accountable for most strategic and business-critical items, even when the partner is Responsible for doing the work. For example:
Patching workstations: partner Responsible, internal IT Accountable.
Firewall rule changes: partner Responsible for execution, internal IT Accountable and must approve.
Security alert triage at night: partner Responsible and Accountable for the first response, internal IT Informed in the morning.
Choosing a new line-of-business application: internal IT Responsible and Accountable, partner Consulted.
This keeps decisions with the people who know the business.
When you review the finished chart, look for:
Rows with no Accountable party. These are the tasks that will be forgotten.
Rows with two Accountable parties. These cause finger-pointing.
Rows where nobody is Informed. Someone in the business usually needs to know.
Tasks missing entirely. Backup restore testing, certificate renewals and license renewals are commonly left off.
Take a single row: "Offboarding a departing employee." HR is Responsible for submitting the request and Accountable for its timing. The partner's helpdesk is Responsible for disabling accounts, collecting license seats and wiping devices. Your internal IT manager is Accountable for confirming nothing was missed on sensitive systems. The employee's department head is Informed when it is done. Written out like that, nobody wonders whose job it was when an old account is still active three months later.
Put the RACI in your shared documentation platform where both teams can see it. Link to it from your onboarding materials and from the runbooks. When a new technician joins either team, the RACI should be part of their first day.
A RACI is a living document. Review it:
At the end of onboarding
Every quarter during your partnership review
After any major incident
When either team gains or loses staff
When you add a new system or location
Each review usually takes less than an hour once the chart exists.
A RACI chart is not glamorous, but it is the backbone of a healthy co-managed partnership. It turns assumptions into agreements and keeps your internal team in charge of the decisions that matter.
Sidecar IT builds a RACI with every client during onboarding and reviews it each quarter. If you want help drawing the lines for your own team, call or text 512-631-0480.
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