The RACI Matrix – Who’s Responsible, Accountable, Consulted… and kept Informed

The RACI matrix is a formal way of establishing the role for each stakeholder/participant whenever multiple parties are involved.

We are doing it (Multiple Responsibles is possible)
The Golden rule (Only one Accountable for each task)
We know/share (Communication flows both ways – Consulted)
Want to know (One way only. Keep them, well… Informed)

Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) – in six easy steps

Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) is a method for discovering the root causes of failures or potential failures. FTA is a top-down approach that helps you understand how to fix or prevent a failure.

FTA starts with a top-level event like a service outage. Then one goes down to detailing all the contributing faults and the causes of faults for that failure. You use the resulting FTA diagram to establish countermeasures to eliminate the causes of the outage.

This can be used for Availability and Continuity activities in search of what can go wrong with the IT infrastructure. Thus it may help isolating weak spots on the infrastructure which in turn enables countermeasures identification and implementation.

Prioritization Technique – MoSCoW (Must, Should, Could and Won’t)

A good focus technique when we have to choose from too many options is the MoSCoW technique.

It comes from the software development Agile Method DSDM and is a straightforward way of prioritizing items.