DACI is a decision-making framework that assigns four roles to every significant decision: Driver, Approver, Contributor, and Informed. It's a tighter alternative to RACI, built for teams that need to move fast without relitigating decisions later.
The roles: the Driver owns the process and is accountable for pushing it to completion. The Approver has final say (one person, not a committee). Contributors provide input and expertise. Informed people are told the outcome after the fact.
Why DACI beats RACI for product teams
RACI muddies the line between who does the work and who decides. In product development, that distinction matters. You want engineers contributing without being dragged into every approval chain. You want a single Approver so the Driver isn't chasing sign-off from six people.
DACI makes that explicit. One Approver. If two people are listed as Approvers, you have a committee, and committees slow things down.
How to use it
Before any meaningful decision, a major roadmap call, a product direction shift, a design trade-off, write down who's driving it, who approves it, who's contributing input, and who just needs to know the outcome.
It takes two minutes and prevents weeks of "wait, who decided this?" conversations. The real cost of skipping it isn't missed meetings. It's decisions that get relitigated after they were supposed to be done.