Skip to content
Discovery WaypointDecision-ready discovery
Start WorkspaceSign in
Start Workspace
Sign in
Atlassian

Atlassian Team Playbook

Run tomorrow · Primary + examples

Atlassian DACI

A fast decision-clarity play for assigning who drives, approves, contributes, and stays informed before a meeting becomes political fog.

Best opened when

Open it when decision meetings keep circling because ownership and consultation rights are still fuzzy.

What to steal first

Borrow the distinction between driver and approver first; that is usually where the fog sits.

What not to copy

It is not a prioritisation framework.

Closest move

Decide / get to a decision with execs

Core operating sequence

Play anatomy

DACI assigns four roles to a decision: the Driver who moves the work to closure, the Approver who can sign off with real authority, the Contributors who should inform the decision, and the Informed who need to know the outcome. The framework exists because organizations routinely confuse involvement with ownership and end up with decisions that everyone participated in but nobody was responsible for closing.

The part that transfers is the distinction between driver and approver. That is where most decision fog sits. A driver without a real approver has accountability without authority. An approver with too many names has neither. Getting those two cells right does most of the work the framework promises.

What does not transfer: the specific Atlassian template format, the ceremony of the exercise, and the belief that filling the table makes the decision good. A clean DACI table does not make a fuzzy decision tractable. It makes a well-framed decision legible.

Run it in the room

A clean first pass you can run

Participants
Decision owner, key contributors whose input genuinely changes the decision, and anyone with approval authority. 3–8 people.
Timing
30–60 minutes. If it takes longer, the decision itself is not yet clear enough.
Prep
Write the decision in one sentence before the session. If you cannot write it in one sentence, the session opens with that problem instead.
  1. 1State the decision in one sentence and get agreement that this is the decision. If the room produces competing versions of the sentence, resolve that first.
  2. 2Assign one Driver. Not two. If there is genuine debate about who drives, that debate is the escalation to resolve — not something to defer.
  3. 3Assign one Approver. If multiple people claim approval rights, name the conflict explicitly and escalate before continuing.
  4. 4Name contributors — people whose input genuinely changes the outcome. If someone is being named as a contributor for political reasons, say so and remove them.
  5. 5Name informed parties. Document the full DACI table in writing before the session ends.

You leave with

A written DACI table with named individuals for this specific decision. Not a template for future use — a completed record.

First failure point: Driver and Approver are both assigned to multiple people, or the same person holds both roles without acknowledgment that this removes a check.

What good looks like

If this is working, these are the signals you should be able to point to

  • The DACI table has exactly one Driver and one Approver — not two of either.
  • Every person in the Contributor column can articulate what input they specifically provided.
  • The decision statement is written in one sentence that the Driver and Approver would both recognise.
  • There is a next action the Driver is taking, with a date.

How it worked there

The conditions that made it hold

Atlassian built DACI into its Team Playbook for product and project decisions in distributed, cross-functional teams. The problem it was addressing was specific: teams with multiple senior stakeholders, no clear sponsor authority, and a decision culture that valued inclusion over closure.

The framework held in that context because Atlassian used it inside a broader operating culture where decision owners were expected to act, not just document. The table created visible accountability. In organizations where the real approval authority sits outside the room, or where naming one approver is politically sensitive, the table fills correctly and the decision still stalls.

What not to copy · Failure modes

What goes wrong when this is copied

Teams fill the matrix without first naming the decision clearly. A DACI table that covers a fuzzy decision question is decoration. The role assignment only matters if the decision is specific enough for the driver to actually drive it. When the scope stays vague, the approver column becomes a list of people who could theoretically stop something, and nobody can move.

The approver role gets distributed until there is no approver. The most common failure is assigning approver to three or four people simultaneously to avoid a political conversation. Distributed approval means no closure. The value of the framework collapses the moment the approver cell has more than one name in it without explicit escalation logic.

DACI is used to avoid the harder conversation rather than to clarify it. In some rooms the matrix gets filled quickly, everyone agrees on the labels, and the same decision deadlock resumes immediately afterward. The framework did not fail — the decision framing was still too unclear for roles to hold. DACI cannot substitute for problem framing or sponsor clarity.

Weak signals to watch for

  • It is not a prioritisation framework.
  • It is not a substitute for cross-functional alignment on the decision itself.
  • Do not use DACI to mask a political decision that is already made elsewhere.
  • Do not overload the approver role with every senior stakeholder in the room.

Closest Waypoint move

What to open next

Primary route

Decide / get to a decision with execs

Use the situation route when the room still lacks decision clarity and executive ownership.

Use this when you need clear decision ownership and can accept that the framework will expose authority gaps the room may not be ready to resolve.

technique

Stakeholder Mapping

Use it when informal influence is as important as formal decision roles.

Sources and confidence

Primary + examples

Reviewed by Discovery Waypoint Editorial Team · 2026-04-04