Roles, responsibilities and tasks: a template that reaches the actual work.

A roles and responsibilities chart tells you who is expected to contribute. To investigate a workflow, you also need to know what each contribution involves and what the next person receives.

This worksheet separates a role, a duty and a task. It then connects the task to its purpose, performer, owner, inputs, systems, output and handoff.

Download the blank work-record CSV. No signup is required. It is an editable discovery worksheet, not a DutyGraph import contract or an access policy.

Role: The organizational position or capacity in which someone works, such as account manager.

Duty: An ongoing responsibility with a purpose, such as keeping customer orders ready for delivery.

Task: A bounded piece of work with a trigger and result, such as checking whether an accepted order contains a delivery contact.

Action: A step within the task, such as opening the order, checking the contact field and requesting missing information.

These are the conventions used in this worksheet. A workflow can cross several duties and departments, so the model is not simply a downward organizational tree.

The performer does the work. The accountable owner is responsible for ensuring the work has a clear purpose and acceptable outcome within the organization's actual rules. A reviewer may check the result, and an authorized approver may make a separate decision.

Do not assume a job title establishes permission. Recording someone as an owner in a draft does not grant approval authority or access to a system.

Illustrative: A customer operations coordinator performs the task “Check delivery details before order release.” The duty is “Prepare accepted orders for fulfillment.” The input is an accepted order. The output is confirmed delivery information or a request to correct it. Fulfillment receives the result. A delivery exception goes to the appropriate human decision-maker.

The role title alone cannot explain that handoff. The cross-functional handoff guide helps define what the receiving team needs.

Use a row for each task. Capture the duty, purpose, trigger, owner, performer, required input, source, actions, software, output, recipient, exceptions, human checkpoint and evidence status. Leave genuinely unknown fields marked “unknown” rather than filling them with plausible guesses.

The record should show who reviewed it and which questions remain unresolved. Keep future improvements separate from the current-state description.

A responsibility matrix is useful for discussing participation and accountability. Atlassian's own roles exercise includes reviewing responsibilities that have no clear owner. Atlassian: roles and responsibilities

This worksheet does not replace that conversation. It adds work-level detail so a label such as “responsible” can be connected to a specific input, action and result. Use the tools together where that helps the team.

Select one workflow. Ask the people involved to explain recent cases. Use the interview prompts to identify tasks and exceptions. Have each person check the account of their work, then compare the handoffs across participants.

DutyGraph supports this process through private voice or text requests, AI-assisted drafts and advisor review. A spreadsheet remains a useful starting point when a full workspace is unnecessary.

Resolve unowned work with the appropriate manager or process owner. Decide which disagreements require evidence. Select a maintenance owner and review triggers. Avoid treating a filled spreadsheet as an automatic company-wide agreement.

Discuss an operations audit when the ownership gaps span teams, or explore the advisor method for client engagements.